Burned area
satellite only18,557ha
Perimeter published by GWIS (Copernicus).
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus)
- Date
- 2 Nov 2026 – 13 Nov 2026
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page to compare it with.
AU · Australia · –
Roper Gulf fire, 2 November 2026 Roper Gulf
Dying down · last detection 13 Nov 2026, 16:20 UTC
The fire started on 2 November 2026 in Roper Gulf, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 18,557 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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Fire page data · version 2026-11-11matches 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 only12days
From 2 Nov 2026 to today: still being detected.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- last detection: 13 Nov 2026, 16:20 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 only2 Nov 2026
First day with fire seen by the satellites or the perimeter.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- 2 Nov 2026
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page, so the alert time and the cause are not known here.
Hotspots
satellite only300
VIIRS detections at 375 m. Most intense hotspot: 161 MW.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (NOAA-20)
- Date
- 2 Nov 2026 – 13 Nov 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 only670MW
Total radiative power on 12 November 2026; hotspots that day: 48.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (FRP)
- Date
- 12 Nov 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
model32.5FWI · high
Fire Weather Index (Canadian system) computed by WorldFires for the day the fire started. Consecutive days without rain before: 6.
- Source
- WorldFires calculation (Canadian FWI system)
- Date
- 2 Nov 2026, local noon
- Model
- ECMWF IFS 0,25° · Open-Meteo.com · provisional
+− 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
model42.0°C · 23% RH
High of 42.0 °C and minimum humidity of 23% on 5 November 2026; gusts of 42 km/h on 7 November 2026.
- Source
- weather model at the fire’s grid cell
- Date
- 2 Nov 2026 – 13 Nov 2026
- Model
- ECMWF IFS 0,25° · Open-Meteo.com · provisional
+− 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 8 November 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 forecast (provisional until ERA5 arrives)
-
logArea: 9,936 → 10,232 ha.
-
· reconstructed GHSLPopulation and built-up area computed
-
logArea: 8,956 → 9,936 ha.
-
logArea: 6,705 → 8,956 ha.
-
logPage published (6,705 ha).
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-2026-11-2?v=2026-11-11A 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-2026-11-2.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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-11-02 | 1 | 1 | 40 | 27.1 | 28 | 20.9 | 38.2 | 0.1 | 32.5 | alto | 1 |
| 2026-11-03 | 7 | 98 | 40.9 | 28.3 | 27 | 13.1 | 31.3 | 0 | 36 | alto | 1 |
| 2026-11-04 | 6 | 6 | 40.6 | 27.7 | 26 | 17.8 | 36 | 0.2 | 33.9 | alto | 1 |
| 2026-11-05 | 19 | 166 | 42 | 27.7 | 23 | 14 | 38.9 | 0.7 | 35.7 | alto | 1 |
| 2026-11-06 | 3 | 10 | 39.7 | 25.7 | 27 | 19.2 | 38.2 | 0.9 | 27 | alto | 1 |
| 2026-11-07 | 55 | 506 | 41.2 | 26.6 | 25 | 21.1 | 42.1 | 0 | 39.8 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2026-11-08 | 55 | 432 | 40.6 | 26.8 | 24 | 20.6 | 38.5 | 0.1 | 35.3 | alto | 1 |
| 2026-11-09 | 10 | 266 | 40.8 | 26.2 | 24 | 11.9 | 31.7 | 1.6 | 40.9 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2026-11-10 | 34 | 212 | 38.5 | 25.3 | 35 | 12.3 | 24.5 | 2.4 | 25.2 | alto | 1 |
| 2026-11-11 | 59 | 429 | 38.7 | 26.1 | 29 | 20.3 | 38.5 | 0.1 | 34.9 | alto | 1 |
| 2026-11-12 | 48 | 670 | 38.7 | 25.9 | 27 | 9.9 | 28.1 | 0.1 | 32.1 | alto | 1 |
| 2026-11-13 | 3 | 10 | 1 |
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), ECMWF IFS · Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0), GHSL (JRC). Open-Meteo.com · How we build fire pages: methodology
Is it still active?
No detections since 13 Nov 2026, 16:20 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
- 18,557ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 12days
- 2 Nov 2026 – 13 Nov 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- local government areas
- Started on
- 2 Nov
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 300
- in a single hotspot: 161 MW
- Danger at start
- 32
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 234MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
HOTSPOTS BY DAY
2 Nov13 Nov
13 Nov 2026
How it evolved, day by day
2 Nov
5 Nov
8 Nov
12 Nov
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
42°high
42km/h · peak gust
23%lowest humidity
It had gone 6 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
31% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,235 ha in 2018, 347 ha in 2021, 1,621 ha in 2022, 272 ha in 2023, 1,228 ha in 2024, 1,401 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,709 ha that had burned before.
- 4,235 ha Roper Gulf fire, October 2018 11,928 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 313 ha Roper Gulf fire, June 2025 6,590 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 290 ha Roper Gulf fire, October 2022 10,920 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 245 ha Roper Gulf fire, June 2025 31,682 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 started18,629 ha reached on 2 Nov0.1 %
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) · forecast models, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 Nov | 40.0 °C | 28 % | 38 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 32 |
| 3 Nov | 40.9 °C | 27 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 4 Nov | 40.6 °C | 26 % | 36 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 34 |
| 5 Nov | 42.0 °C | 23 % | 39 km/h | 0.7 mm | High 36 |
| 6 Nov | 39.7 °C | 27 % | 38 km/h | 0.9 mm | High 27 |
| 7 Nov | 41.2 °C | 25 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 8 Nov | 40.6 °C | 24 % | 38 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 35 |
| 9 Nov | 40.8 °C | 24 % | 32 km/h | 1.6 mm | Very high 41 |
| 10 Nov | 38.5 °C | 35 % | 24 km/h | 2.4 mm | High 25 |
| 11 Nov | 38.7 °C | 29 % | 38 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 35 |
| 12 Nov | 38.7 °C | 27 % | 28 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 32 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
↔
Before · 26 Oct 2026
After · 13 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 7 November 2026 the air beside the fire reached 32 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 17: 1.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
PM2.5 peak32 µg/m³
Days over the guideline2 days
PM1036 µg/m³
Optical depth0.51
WHO 15
31 Oct2 Nov4 Nov6 Nov
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 · 300Every 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
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 2 November 2026 to 13 November 2026 (12 days). The perimeter dates it from 5 November 2026 to 13 November 2026.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 18,557 hectares (185.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Roper Gulf (18,629 ha, 0.1 %).
- Is the Roper Gulf fire still active?
- No fire detections since 13 Nov 2026, 16:20 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 42.0 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 41, 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 · 4 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 8 November 2026.
- Area: 9,936 → 10,232 ha.
- Area: 8,956 → 9,936 ha.
- Area: 6,705 → 8,956 ha.
- Page published (6,705 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 5 November 2026 to 13 November 2026. 300 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.
- 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.