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Roper Gulf fire, 5 October 2018 Roper Gulf

Out · last detection 21 Oct 2018, 04:58 UTC

The fire started on 5 October 2018 in Roper Gulf, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 41,181 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 237th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3496 with a page). Number 42 in Australia in 2018, of 923.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Roper Gulf · 2025Roper Gulf · 2025Roper Gulf · 2021Roper Gulf · 2021

Burnt area
41,181ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
17days
5 Oct 2018 – 21 Oct 2018
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
5 Oct
2018
Heat detections
1,333
in a single hotspot: 193 MW
Danger at start
48
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
1.1GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Oct21 Oct
21 Oct 2018

How it evolved, day by day

5 Oct 2018 · 1 MW · 1 6 Oct 2018 · 1,849 MW · 68 7 Oct 2018 · 598 MW · 35 8 Oct 2018 · 282 MW · 27 9 Oct 2018 · 2,686 MW · 126 10 Oct 2018 · 2,595 MW · 126 11 Oct 2018 · 1,105 MW · 117 12 Oct 2018 · 1,324 MW · 156 13 Oct 2018 · 2,586 MW · 142 14 Oct 2018 · 2,542 MW · 174 15 Oct 2018 · 1,444 MW · 233 16 Oct 2018 · 361 MW · 51 17 Oct 2018 · 64 MW · 12 18 Oct 2018 · 128 MW · 9 19 Oct 2018 · 49 MW · 11 20 Oct 2018 · 363 MW · 44 21 Oct 2018 · 10 MW · 1
5 Oct 8 Oct 9 Oct 11 Oct 14 Oct 17 Oct 20 Oct

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

39°high
48km/h · peak gust
14%lowest humidity

It had gone 53 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

1% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 270 ha in 2016, 224 ha in 2017.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 26% of the area of London (412 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

  1. Roper Gulf where it started
    41,342 ha reached on 5 Oct
    0.2 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance runs from the point marking the centre of each area to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2020
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, satellite-based estimate).

This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned.

Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu

The weather day by day

ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, the standard reference for past weather, and the Canadian Fire Weather Index (the same system Copernicus uses), computed by WorldFires from that data. Days after the fire run until the first rain.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
5 Oct 35.8 °C 26 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
6 Oct 34.5 °C 20 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
7 Oct 35.1 °C 16 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
8 Oct 37.5 °C 17 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
9 Oct 36.1 °C 26 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
10 Oct 36.6 °C 27 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
11 Oct 37.7 °C 22 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
12 Oct 35.0 °C 38 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
13 Oct 37.9 °C 20 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
14 Oct 38.2 °C 20 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
15 Oct 38.7 °C 21 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
16 Oct 37.0 °C 32 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
17 Oct 32.8 °C 48 % 44 km/h 3.8 mm Moderate 12
18 Oct 34.4 °C 34 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
19 Oct 37.5 °C 19 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
20 Oct 38.5 °C 17 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
21 Oct 38.3 °C 24 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
22 Oct after 39.1 °C 20 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
23 Oct after 39.1 °C 14 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
24 Oct after 38.5 °C 21 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
25 Oct after 37.4 °C 25 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
26 Oct after 38.1 °C 21 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
27 Oct after 37.6 °C 16 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
28 Oct after 37.2 °C 26 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
29 Oct after 39.1 °C 17 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
30 Oct after 38.5 °C 29 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
31 Oct after 36.3 °C 37 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
1 Nov after 36.2 °C 37 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
2 Nov after 35.7 °C 37 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
3 Nov after 35.0 °C 42 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
4 Nov after 35.9 °C 31 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
5 Nov after 38.2 °C 25 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
6 Nov after 38.5 °C 25 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
7 Nov after 38.9 °C 22 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48

Before and after, from space

Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.

Before · 28 Sept 2018
After · 28 Oct 2018

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

Detections table · 1,333Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
⬇ Download CSV Times in UTC. Each detection is a 375 m pixel: a large fire yields hundreds per pass.
Date and timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Australia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Roper Gulf fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 5 October 2018 and 21 October 2018: 17 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 41,181 hectares (411.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Roper Gulf (41,342 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.1 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 57, class Extreme.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Australia (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

Where to verify it

A satellite detection is not an official report. Final figures and the fire’s status are published by each country’s emergency service.

Emergency number: 000 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

History of this page Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

RSS Changes to this page

Does something look wrong on this page?

This page is built from satellite data and official records, and it sometimes gets things wrong: the wrong dates, the wrong town, two fires merged into one, or something that was not a wildfire at all. If you know this fire first-hand (you live nearby, saw it, fought it or reported on it), tell us what really happened and we will check it.

Report an error
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We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy. This is not an emergency service: if there is a fire now, call 000.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 1,333 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • We have not matched this page with any official record.
  • Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.
  • Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2020, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

How we build fire pages: methodology ›

Where this data comes from

The perimeter comes from the Copernicus Global Wildfire Information System (GWIS), which rebuilds it from MODIS and VIIRS heat detections and publishes it under CC BY 4.0. It is not measured on imagery as in Europe, so it is an estimate. Heat detections come from the VIIRS sensors aboard Suomi-NPP and NOAA-20, distributed by NASA FIRMS at 375 m resolution. Municipal boundaries come from geoBoundaries ADM2 (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)). The area per municipality is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ from each country’s official figure.