Roper Gulf fire, 28 May 2026 Roper Gulf
The fire started on 28 May 2026 in Roper Gulf, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,779 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 1720th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3521 with a page). Number 424 in Australia in 2026, of 921.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 8,779ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 11days
- 28 May 2026 – 7 Jun 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- local government areas
- Started on
- 28 May
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 242
- in a single hotspot: 89 MW
- Danger at start
- 19
- Moderate · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 362MW
- 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 12 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
99% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,956 ha in 2016, 3,921 ha in 2017, 5,595 ha in 2018, 1,888 ha in 2019, 1,009 ha in 2020, 4,245 ha in 2021, 3,302 ha in 2022, 888 ha in 2023, 3,753 ha in 2024, 1,945 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 8,729 ha that had burned before.
- 2,696 ha Roper Gulf fire, April 2022 14,497 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,689 ha Roper Gulf fire, June 2024 5,096 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,700 ha Roper Gulf fire, May 2018 26,372 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
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 started8,775 ha reached on 28 May0.0 %
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 2025Inside 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 | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 28 May | 27.2 °C | 33 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 19 |
| 29 May | 27.3 °C | 33 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 30 May | 27.9 °C | 32 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 31 May | 29.3 °C | 32 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 21 |
| 1 Jun | 30.0 °C | 32 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 21 |
| 2 Jun | 30.9 °C | 29 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 3 Jun | 30.9 °C | 28 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 4 Jun | 30.8 °C | 32 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 5 Jun | 29.4 °C | 41 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 6 Jun | 26.5 °C | 27 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 7 Jun | 26.4 °C | 37 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 8 Jun after | 27.8 °C | 54 % | 31 km/h | 0.2 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 9 Jun after | 30.4 °C | 35 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 10 Jun after | 30.6 °C | 40 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 11 Jun after | 30.8 °C | 41 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 12 Jun after | 30.3 °C | 44 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 13 Jun after | 29.7 °C | 39 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 14 Jun after | 29.4 °C | 43 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 15 Jun after | 29.9 °C | 37 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 16 Jun after | 29.3 °C | 45 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 17 Jun after | 29.6 °C | 49 % | 32 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 23 |
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.
The smoke
CAMS · CopernicusOn 28 May 2026 the air beside the fire reached 34 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 18: 1.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 242Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 26,372 haRoper Gulf1 May 2018 · 22 days · 11 km away
- 29,414 haRoper Gulf2 May 2018 · 20 days · 29 km away
- 25,307 haRoper Gulf7 July 2026 · 5 days · 31 km away
- 21,046 haRoper Gulf2 May 2018 · 21 days · 31 km away
- 104,997 haRoper Gulf4 October 2019 · 22 days · 40 km away
- 20,076 haRoper Gulf3 July 2026 · 18 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 28 May 2026 to 7 June 2026 (11 days). The perimeter dates it from 28 May 2026 to 1 June 2026.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,779 hectares (87.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Roper Gulf (8,775 ha, 0.0 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 30.9 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 26, class 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
History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 1 June 2026 → 7 June 2026.
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 28 May 2026 to 1 June 2026. 242 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.
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.