How long did the Roper Gulf fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 15 May 2023 to 31 May 2023 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 15 May 2023 to 26 May 2023.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 9,393 hectares (93.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Roper Gulf (9,508 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 33.0 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, class Very high.

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.

AU · Australia · 2023-05-15 → 2023-05-31

Roper Gulf fire, 15 May 2023 Roper Gulf

Out · last detection 31 May 2023, 04:02 UTC

The fire started on 15 May 2023 in Roper Gulf, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,393 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1592th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3518 with a page). Number 600 in Australia in 2023, of 1235.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Roper Gulf · 2023 Roper Gulf · 2019 Roper Gulf · 2020

Burnt area: 9,393ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 17days; 15 May 2023 – 31 May 2023
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 15 May; 2023
Heat detections: 386; in a single hotspot: 74 MW
Danger at start: 29; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 182MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 May31 May

Play back 31 May 2023

How it evolved, day by day

15 May 18 May 20 May 21 May 24 May 28 May

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

The weather it burned in

33°high

49km/h · peak gust

20%lowest humidity

It had gone 25 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

48% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,666 ha in 2016, 108 ha in 2017, 942 ha in 2018, 23 ha in 2019, 130 ha in 2020, 2,256 ha in 2021, 247 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,517 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 5.9% of the area of London (94 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

Roper Gulf where it started

9,508 ha reached on 15 May

0.0 %

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 2025

Built-up area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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	Danger (FWI)
15 May	33.0 °C	31 %	31 km/h	High 29
16 May	32.4 °C	28 %	38 km/h	High 35
17 May	30.2 °C	26 %	45 km/h	High 38
18 May	30.1 °C	26 %	44 km/h	High 38
19 May	28.2 °C	22 %	44 km/h	Very high 39
20 May	26.8 °C	20 %	40 km/h	Very high 38
21 May	26.6 °C	23 %	46 km/h	Very high 42
22 May	28.0 °C	25 %	49 km/h	Very high 44
23 May	27.9 °C	25 %	45 km/h	Very high 42
24 May	29.2 °C	24 %	42 km/h	Very high 40
25 May	30.2 °C	33 %	39 km/h	High 37
26 May	30.8 °C	24 %	42 km/h	Very high 41
27 May	26.8 °C	23 %	44 km/h	Very high 41
28 May	25.7 °C	21 %	41 km/h	Very high 40
29 May	26.7 °C	23 %	44 km/h	Very high 42
30 May	27.6 °C	22 %	42 km/h	Very high 41
31 May	29.1 °C	22 %	36 km/h	High 37
1 Jun after	30.1 °C	28 %	37 km/h	Very high 38
2 Jun after	31.4 °C	32 %	35 km/h	Very high 39
3 Jun after	31.4 °C	29 %	29 km/h	High 36
4 Jun after	32.4 °C	33 %	30 km/h	High 36
5 Jun after	31.9 °C	38 %	34 km/h	High 35
6 Jun after	33.6 °C	34 %	38 km/h	High 37
7 Jun after	32.9 °C	38 %	35 km/h	High 36
8 Jun after	33.4 °C	34 %	34 km/h	High 35
9 Jun after	31.6 °C	34 %	42 km/h	Very high 40
10 Jun after	30.2 °C	28 %	38 km/h	High 38

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 8 May 2023

After · 7 Jun 2023

Before After

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

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 22 May 2023 the air beside the fire reached 36 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 16: 1.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak36 µg/m³

Days over the guideline1 day

PM1055 µg/m³

Optical depth0.49

WHO 15

1314151617181920212223242526272829

Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 386Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Australia ›

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 15 May 2023 to 31 May 2023 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 15 May 2023 to 26 May 2023.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 9,393 hectares (93.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Roper Gulf (9,508 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 33.0 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, class Very high.
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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

26 October 2026 Last day with fire: 26 May 2023 → 31 May 2023.

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

What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 15 May 2023 to 26 May 2023. 386 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 2025, 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.

Where it burned