How long did the Roper Gulf fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 19 July 2025 to 30 July 2025 (12 days). The perimeter dates it from 19 July 2025 to 27 July 2025.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,822 hectares (68.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Roper Gulf (6,896 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 33.1 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 47, 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 · 19 Jul 2025 – 30 Jul 2025

Roper Gulf fire, 19 July 2025 Roper Gulf

Out · last detection 30 Jul 2025, 16:21 UTC

The fire started on 19 July 2025 in Roper Gulf, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,822 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 2364th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3521 with a page). Number 763 in Australia in 2025, of 1124.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Roper Gulf · 2026 Roper Gulf · 2024

Burnt area: 6,822ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 12days; 19 Jul 2025 – 30 Jul 2025
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 19 Jul; 2025
Heat detections: 248; in a single hotspot: 191 MW
Danger at start: 42; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 556MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 19 Jul30 Jul

Play back 30 Jul 2025

How it evolved, day by day

19 Jul 21 Jul 23 Jul 26 Jul 30 Jul

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

40km/h · peak gust

15%lowest humidity

It had gone 51 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

7% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 297 ha in 2017, 125 ha in 2018, 100 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 467 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 4.3% of the area of London (68 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

6,896 ha reached on 19 Jul

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 area0.67 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.67 hectares of 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	Rain	Danger (FWI)
19 Jul	28.0 °C	19 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
20 Jul	27.7 °C	16 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
21 Jul	28.1 °C	15 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
22 Jul	31.6 °C	16 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
23 Jul	32.7 °C	19 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
24 Jul	32.8 °C	19 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
25 Jul	32.5 °C	36 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
26 Jul	30.8 °C	35 %	34 km/h	0.2 mm	High 36
27 Jul	32.3 °C	36 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
28 Jul	31.5 °C	42 %	39 km/h	0.1 mm	High 34
29 Jul	33.1 °C	32 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
30 Jul	32.7 °C	27 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
31 Jul after	29.2 °C	31 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
1 Aug after	26.4 °C	22 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
2 Aug after	24.8 °C	11 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
3 Aug after	26.3 °C	12 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
4 Aug after	28.3 °C	13 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
5 Aug after	30.5 °C	7 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
6 Aug after	31.9 °C	12 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
7 Aug after	32.3 °C	17 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
8 Aug after	31.8 °C	20 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
9 Aug after	30.4 °C	17 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 55

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 12 Jul 2025

After · 6 Aug 2025

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 25 July 2025 the air beside the fire reached 34 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 28: 1.9 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak34 µg/m³

Days over the guideline1 day

PM1035 µg/m³

Optical depth0.69

WHO 15

17 Jul20 Jul23 Jul26 Jul29 Jul

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 · 248Every 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 19 July 2025 to 30 July 2025 (12 days). The perimeter dates it from 19 July 2025 to 27 July 2025.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,822 hectares (68.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Roper Gulf (6,896 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 33.1 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 47, 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: 27 July 2025 → 30 July 2025.

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 19 July 2025 to 27 July 2025. 248 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