Roper Gulf fire, 26 July 2019 Roper Gulf
The fire started on 26 July 2019 in Roper Gulf, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 22 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 20,670 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 585th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3508 with a page). Number 159 in Australia in 2019, of 802.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 20,670ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 22days
- 26 Jul 2019 – 16 Aug 2019
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- local government areas
- Started on
- 26 Jul
- 2019
- Heat detections
- 907
- in a single hotspot: 116 MW
- Danger at start
- 41
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 531MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
43% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 693 ha in 2016, 1,325 ha in 2017, 7,728 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 8,839 ha that had burned before.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Roper Gulf where it started20,892 ha reached on 29 Jul0.1 %
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.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 26 Jul | 30.0 °C | 20 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 27 Jul | 30.2 °C | 23 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 28 Jul | 30.5 °C | 27 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 29 Jul | 31.1 °C | 26 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 30 Jul | 31.4 °C | 25 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 31 Jul | 32.1 °C | 19 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 1 Aug | 29.1 °C | 16 % | 52 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 2 Aug | 28.5 °C | 15 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 3 Aug | 28.9 °C | 26 % | 54 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 4 Aug | 28.4 °C | 32 % | 51 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 5 Aug | 29.0 °C | 42 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 6 Aug | 29.7 °C | 27 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 7 Aug | 31.2 °C | 24 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 8 Aug | 33.4 °C | 17 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 9 Aug | 32.2 °C | 17 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 10 Aug | 32.0 °C | 12 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 11 Aug | 27.2 °C | 13 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 12 Aug | 26.1 °C | 12 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 13 Aug | 27.1 °C | 12 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 14 Aug | 29.1 °C | 14 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 15 Aug | 30.5 °C | 28 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 16 Aug | 31.4 °C | 29 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 17 Aug after | 31.8 °C | 37 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 18 Aug after | 33.8 °C | 32 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 19 Aug after | 30.3 °C | 16 % | 53 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 20 Aug after | 27.8 °C | 15 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 21 Aug after | 28.7 °C | 14 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 22 Aug after | 30.0 °C | 11 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 23 Aug after | 30.7 °C | 10 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 24 Aug after | 29.9 °C | 20 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 25 Aug after | 30.3 °C | 26 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 26 Aug after | 31.8 °C | 13 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · 907Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 47,665 haRoper Gulf7 August 2019 · 30 days · 13 km away
- 21,726 haRoper Gulf19 July 2026 · 18 days · 26 km away
- 77,341 haRoper Gulf25 October 2020 · 40 days · 34 km away
- 30,457 haRoper Gulf29 October 2025 · 18 days · 34 km away
- 24,701 haRoper Gulf20 May 2023 · 21 days · 38 km away
- 21,550 haRoper Gulf11 October 2016 · 9 days · 40 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Roper Gulf fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 26 July 2019 to 16 August 2019 (22 days). The perimeter dates it from 1 August 2019 to 16 August 2019.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 20,670 hectares (206.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Roper Gulf (20,892 ha, 0.1 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 33.4 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 58, 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Start date: 1 August 2019 → 26 July 2019.
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
How we know this
- Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 1 August 2019 to 16 August 2019. 907 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.
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.