Roper Gulf fire, November 2026 Roper Gulf
The fire started on 1 November 2026 in Roper Gulf, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,066 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 3450th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3519 with a page). Number 888 in Australia in 2026, of 911.
Compare with…
Is it still active?
No detections since 3 Nov 2026, 04:57 UTC. That usually means no flame is visible from space any more, although hotspots may remain. 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.
- Burnt area
- 5,066ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 3days
- 1 Nov 2026 – 3 Nov 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- local government areas
- Started on
- 1 Nov
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 108
- in a single hotspot: 230 MW
- Danger at start
- 39
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 1.0GW
- 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 5 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
86% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,364 ha in 2018, 1,202 ha in 2021, 103 ha in 2024, 2,995 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,339 ha that had burned before.
- 1,748 ha Roper Gulf fire, June 2025 31,688 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,092 ha Roper Gulf fire, November 2021 25,859 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 58 ha Roper Gulf fire, June 2025 6,590 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 started5,089 ha reached on 1 Nov0.0 %
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.
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) · forecast models, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 Nov | 40.0 °C | 24 % | 43 km/h | 0.1 mm | Very high 39 |
| 2 Nov | 40.3 °C | 28 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 3 Nov | 41.1 °C | 24 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
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 2 November 2026 the air beside the fire reached 12 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO 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 · 108Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 31,688 haRoper Gulf6 June 2025 · 14 days · 10 km away
- 25,859 haRoper Gulf15 November 2021 · 9 days · 12 km away
- 16,509 haRoper Gulf20 October 2026 · 8 days · 30 km away
- 54,272 haRoper Gulf18 September 2025 · 35 days · 33 km away
- 41,181 haRoper Gulf5 October 2018 · 17 days · 33 km away
- 37,255 haRoper Gulf8 October 2026 · 16 days · 33 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 1 November 2026 to 3 November 2026 (3 days). The perimeter dates it from 1 November 2026 to 2 November 2026.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,066 hectares (50.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Roper Gulf (5,089 ha, 0.0 %).
- Is the Roper Gulf fire still active?
- No fire detections since 3 Nov 2026, 04:57 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 41.1 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 43 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, 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
History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 3 November 2026.
- Page published (5,066 ha).
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 November 2026 to 2 November 2026. 108 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- Weather: ECMWF IFS model, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives.
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.