Burned area
satellite only6,838ha
Perimeter published by GWIS (Copernicus).
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus)
- Date
- 17 Oct 2026 – 30 Oct 2026
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page to compare it with.
AU · Australia · –
Roper Gulf fire, 17 October 2026 Roper Gulf
Out · last detection 30 Oct 2026, 05:18 UTC
The fire started on 17 October 2026 in Roper Gulf, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,838 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
This entry is probably a savanna fire in Australia’s tropical north, not a bushfire like those in the south of the country. Millions of hectares of northern savanna and grassland burn every year: much of it in burns lit on purpose early in the dry season (traditional fire management, parks and cattle stations), the rest in grass fires that return to the same ground every few years. This is our assumption, based on the location; it is not confirmed. That is why it is left out of the wildfire rankings.
GWIS near-real-time perimeter, from the layer that changed in October 2025: this fire is not compared with fires from earlier years, because since then the GWIS layer gives more and larger perimeters.
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Use this data
Fire page data · version 2026-11-02matches the official recordwith caveatssatellite onlymodel
When copying, the sentence is
Tick the figures you want: they make up the lede and the CSV.
Duration by satellite
satellite only14days
17 Oct 2026 to 30 Oct 2026: first and last day with fire on the page.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- last detection: 30 Oct 2026, 05:18 UTC
+− cross-check
Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.
Start
satellite only17 Oct 2026
First day with fire seen by the satellites or the perimeter.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- 17 Oct 2026
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page, so the alert time and the cause are not known here.
Hotspots
satellite only135
VIIRS detections at 375 m. Most intense hotspot: 160 MW.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (Suomi NPP)
- Date
- 17 Oct 2026 – 30 Oct 2026
+− cross-check
There is no official record to compare with. Each hotspot is a pixel detected in one satellite pass, not a separate fire.
The worst day
satellite only666MW
Total radiative power on 18 October 2026; hotspots that day: 38.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (FRP)
- Date
- 18 Oct 2026
+− cross-check
Fire radiative power (FRP) measures the energy the fire gives off when the satellite passes. Added up by day, it compares intensity, not area.
Danger at the start
model43.6FWI · very high
Fire Weather Index (Canadian system) computed by WorldFires for the day the fire started. Consecutive days without rain before: 15.
- Source
- WorldFires calculation (Canadian FWI system)
- Date
- 17 Oct 2026, local noon
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
This is an index computed from weather model data, not a measurement of the fire nor an official warning. Danger warnings are issued by each country’s authority. Emergency number and official warnings
Weather during the fire
model38.8°C · 30% RH
High of 38.8 °C and minimum humidity of 30% on 27 October 2026; gusts of 43 km/h on 20 October 2026.
- Source
- weather model at the fire’s grid cell
- Date
- 17 Oct 2026 – 30 Oct 2026
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
These are model values for a cell of about 25 km, not from a weather station: they may differ from what was measured on the ground.
This page’s change log has been kept since 24 October 2026: every night what it publishes is compared and the difference is logged. Anything earlier is reconstructed from each source’s date and marked as reconstructed.
Show
-
· reconstructed weatherWeather and FWI computed from the ERA5 reanalysis
-
logLast day with fire: 23 October 2026 → 30 October 2026.
-
logArea: 6,689 → 6,838 ha.
-
logArea: 6,242 → 6,689 ha.
-
· reconstructed GHSLPopulation and built-up area computed
Area logged each night
Move the slider to see which area the page published each day.
Versioned permanent link
https://worldfires.org/en/fire/roper-gulf-2026-10-16?v=2026-11-02A version keeps the area, dates, name and official record; the area as it was logged (changes under 2% are not logged). The map, hotspots and weather always show today’s data.
Citation
A lede of about 60 words figures only, no adjectives
CSV for this fire roper-gulf-2026-10-16.csv · daily, no individual hotspots
| fecha | focos_viirs | frp_mw | tmax_c | tmin_c | hr_min_pct | viento_max_kmh | racha_max_kmh | precip_mm | fwi | clase_fwi | dentro_del_incendio |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-17 | 25 | 585 | 35.9 | 24 | 35 | 21.1 | 40.7 | 0 | 43.6 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2026-10-18 | 38 | 666 | 36.3 | 24.4 | 32 | 19.1 | 37.4 | 0 | 41.8 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2026-10-19 | 28 | 275 | 36.7 | 22.8 | 31 | 19.6 | 38.5 | 0 | 44.6 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2026-10-20 | 13 | 116 | 36.2 | 23.3 | 35 | 20.7 | 43.2 | 0 | 50.6 | extremo | 1 |
| 2026-10-21 | 11 | 90 | 36.2 | 22.7 | 37 | 16.4 | 36.4 | 0 | 48.3 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2026-10-22 | 11 | 44 | 38 | 24.2 | 29 | 17.4 | 36 | 0 | 44.2 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2026-10-23 | 1 | 7 | 38.1 | 24.3 | 29 | 19 | 40.7 | 0 | 39.6 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2026-10-24 | 0 | 0 | 36.4 | 26.2 | 34 | 15.6 | 36.4 | 0.2 | 40.9 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2026-10-25 | 4 | 18 | 38.6 | 26 | 30 | 17.1 | 32.4 | 0 | 43.3 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2026-10-26 | 0 | 0 | 38.5 | 26.4 | 35 | 14.8 | 32.4 | 1.1 | 35.3 | alto | 1 |
| 2026-10-27 | 2 | 3 | 38.8 | 26.3 | 30 | 15.9 | 32.8 | 0.1 | 27.8 | alto | 1 |
| 2026-10-28 | 2 | 40 | 37.6 | 25.9 | 35 | 20.1 | 38.9 | 0 | 39.4 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2026-10-29 | 0 | 0 | 37.9 | 25.1 | 33 | 17.2 | 37.4 | 0 | 41.3 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2026-10-30 | 0 | 0 | 36.1 | 25.4 | 39 | 19.1 | 43.2 | 0 | 52.5 | extremo | 1 |
| 2026-10-31 | 0 | 0 | 39 | 24.2 | 28 | 19.1 | 37.4 | 0 | 42.3 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2026-11-01 | 0 | 0 | 39.5 | 25.9 | 29 | 20.8 | 40.3 | 0 | 48.1 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2026-11-02 | 0 | 0 | 39.2 | 25.5 | 30 | 20.1 | 40 | 0 | 40.8 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2026-11-03 | 0 | 0 | 41.5 | 27.1 | 22 | 18.2 | 33.5 | 0 | 43.3 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2026-11-04 | 0 | 0 | 40 | 28.5 | 27 | 17.4 | 33.1 | 0 | 43 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2026-11-05 | 0 | 0 | 40.3 | 26.8 | 28 | 15.7 | 35.6 | 0.1 | 42.3 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2026-11-06 | 0 | 0 | 39.8 | 27.5 | 29 | 18.3 | 40.7 | 0 | 46.3 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2026-11-07 | 0 | 0 | 38.7 | 26.4 | 32 | 19 | 37.8 | 0 | 52.1 | extremo | 0 |
| 2026-11-08 | 0 | 0 | 38 | 25.1 | 32 | 18 | 37.8 | 0 | 49.7 | muy_alto | 0 |
It is generated in your browser from this page’s data: one file per fire, aggregated by day and without individual hotspots.
Live widget for your story
It updates itself while the fire is still active and links to this page. Free, with the attribution shown at the bottom.
Sources for this page: GWIS (Copernicus), NASA FIRMS (VIIRS), ERA5 (ECMWF/Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0), GHSL (JRC). Open-Meteo.com · How we build fire pages: methodology
- Burnt area
- 6,838ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 14days
- 17 Oct 2026 – 30 Oct 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- local government areas
- Started on
- 17 Oct
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 135
- in a single hotspot: 160 MW
- Danger at start
- 44
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 184MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
HOTSPOTS BY DAY
17 Oct30 Oct
30 Oct 2026
How it evolved, day by day
18 Oct
23 Oct
27 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
43km/h · peak gust
29%lowest humidity
It had gone 15 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
59% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 279 ha in 2016, 312 ha in 2018, 696 ha in 2019, 211 ha in 2020, 3,091 ha in 2021, 105 ha in 2023, 1,552 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,001 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 started6,858 ha reached on 17 Oct0.0 %
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 2025Built-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 | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 17 Oct | 35.9 °C | 35 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 18 Oct | 36.3 °C | 32 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 19 Oct | 36.7 °C | 31 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 20 Oct | 36.2 °C | 35 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 21 Oct | 36.2 °C | 37 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 22 Oct | 38.0 °C | 29 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 23 Oct | 38.1 °C | 29 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 24 Oct | 36.4 °C | 34 % | 36 km/h | 0.2 mm | Very high 41 |
| 25 Oct | 38.6 °C | 30 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 26 Oct | 38.5 °C | 35 % | 32 km/h | 1.1 mm | High 35 |
| 27 Oct | 38.8 °C | 30 % | 33 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 28 |
| 28 Oct | 37.6 °C | 35 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 29 Oct | 37.9 °C | 33 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 30 Oct | 36.1 °C | 39 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 31 Oct after | 39.0 °C | 28 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 1 Nov after | 39.5 °C | 29 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 2 Nov after | 39.2 °C | 30 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 3 Nov after | 41.5 °C | 22 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 4 Nov after | 40.0 °C | 27 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 5 Nov after | 40.3 °C | 28 % | 36 km/h | 0.1 mm | Very high 42 |
| 6 Nov after | 39.8 °C | 29 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 7 Nov after | 38.7 °C | 32 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 8 Nov after | 38.0 °C | 32 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
↔
Before · 10 Oct 2026
After · 6 Nov 2026
Sentinel-2 did not pass over on that day. Try another date, or use false colour, which is daily.
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 19 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 32 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 22: 1.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
PM2.5 peak32 µg/m³
Days over the guideline4 days
PM1035 µg/m³
Optical depth0.38
WHO 15
15 Oct17 Oct19 Oct
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 · 135Every 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
- 41,181 haRoper Gulf5 October 2018 · 17 days · 31 km away
- 18,557 haRoper Gulf 2 November 2026 · 13 days · 31 km away
- 54,272 haRoper Gulf18 September 2025 · 35 days · 32 km away
- 11,928 haRoper Gulf27 October 2018 · 7 days · 36 km away
- 10,920 haRoper Gulf23 October 2022 · 14 days · 36 km away
- 16,509 haRoper Gulf20 October 2026 · 8 days · 38 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 17 October 2026 to 30 October 2026 (14 days). The perimeter dates it from 17 October 2026 to 26 October 2026.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,838 hectares (68.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Roper Gulf (6,858 ha, 0.0 %).
- Is the Roper Gulf fire still active?
- No fire detections since 30 Oct 2026, 05:18 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 38.8 °C, humidity dropped to 29 % and gusts hit 43 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 52, 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 · 3 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 23 October 2026 → 30 October 2026.
- Area: 6,689 → 6,838 ha.
- Area: 6,242 → 6,689 ha.
RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version
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 17 October 2026 to 26 October 2026. 135 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.
- Probably a vegetation burn: not counted in the totals.
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.