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Tiwi Islands fire, August 2017 Tiwi Islands

Out · last detection 20 Sept 2017, 05:24 UTC

The fire started on 20 August 2017 in Tiwi Islands, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 32 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 20,671 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 588th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3519 with a page). Number 100 in Australia in 2017, of 862.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Tiwi Islands · 2026Tiwi Islands · 2026Tiwi Islands · 2023Tiwi Islands · 2016

Burnt area
20,671ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
32days
20 Aug 2017 – 20 Sept 2017
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
20 Aug
2017
Heat detections
863
in a single hotspot: 128 MW
Danger at start
29
High · FWI index
Average daily power
216MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 20 Aug20 Sept
20 Sept 2017

How it evolved, day by day

20 Aug 2017 · 327 MW · 23 21 Aug 2017 · 634 MW · 32 22 Aug 2017 · 143 MW · 24 23 Aug 2017 · 90 MW · 19 24 Aug 2017 · 84 MW · 22 25 Aug 2017 · 1,182 MW · 70 26 Aug 2017 · 468 MW · 60 27 Aug 2017 · 798 MW · 54 28 Aug 2017 · 434 MW · 75 29 Aug 2017 · 257 MW · 57 30 Aug 2017 · 227 MW · 46 31 Aug 2017 · 344 MW · 70 1 Sept 2017 · 253 MW · 28 2 Sept 2017 · 119 MW · 16 3 Sept 2017 · 19 MW · 8 4 Sept 2017 · 150 MW · 21 5 Sept 2017 · 112 MW · 19 6 Sept 2017 · 136 MW · 22 7 Sept 2017 · 14 MW · 7 8 Sept 2017 · 93 MW · 23 9 Sept 2017 · 113 MW · 30 10 Sept 2017 · 182 MW · 40 11 Sept 2017 · 239 MW · 23 12 Sept 2017 · 46 MW · 7 13 Sept 2017 · 18 MW · 7 14 Sept 2017 · 241 MW · 21 15 Sept 2017 · 21 MW · 7 16 Sept 2017 · 50 MW · 6 17 Sept 2017 · 67 MW · 11 18 Sept 2017 · 22 MW · 4 19 Sept 2017 · 39 MW · 10 20 Sept 2017 · 4 MW · 1
20 Aug 25 Aug 30 Aug 4 Sept 9 Sept 14 Sept 19 Sept

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

32°high
53km/h · peak gust
20%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 11.3 mm on 2 Oct.

This area had burned before

33% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 7,446 ha in 2016. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,913 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 13% of the area of London (207 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

  1. Tiwi Islands where it started
    20,806 ha reached on 20 Aug
    2.8 %

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 2015
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, 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.

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)
20 Aug 30.8 °C 39 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
21 Aug 30.6 °C 34 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
22 Aug 30.2 °C 45 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
23 Aug 29.3 °C 45 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
24 Aug 30.7 °C 35 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
25 Aug 31.1 °C 27 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
26 Aug 30.1 °C 24 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
27 Aug 30.3 °C 21 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
28 Aug 29.5 °C 20 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
29 Aug 30.0 °C 26 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
30 Aug 30.0 °C 20 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
31 Aug 30.5 °C 29 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
1 Sept 30.5 °C 41 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
2 Sept 31.4 °C 40 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
3 Sept 30.6 °C 49 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
4 Sept 31.3 °C 38 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
5 Sept 31.4 °C 31 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
6 Sept 31.2 °C 31 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
7 Sept 31.3 °C 27 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
8 Sept 30.9 °C 22 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
9 Sept 30.9 °C 27 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
10 Sept 31.1 °C 30 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
11 Sept 31.2 °C 35 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
12 Sept 30.6 °C 48 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
13 Sept 29.9 °C 60 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
14 Sept 31.6 °C 49 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
15 Sept 32.1 °C 23 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
16 Sept 31.5 °C 34 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
17 Sept 32.0 °C 28 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
18 Sept 31.5 °C 36 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
19 Sept 31.3 °C 41 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
20 Sept 31.6 °C 48 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
21 Sept after 31.1 °C 50 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
22 Sept after 31.9 °C 48 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
23 Sept after 32.0 °C 46 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
24 Sept after 32.3 °C 50 % 27 km/h 0.2 mm High 26
25 Sept after 32.1 °C 49 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
26 Sept after 32.2 °C 47 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
27 Sept after 32.8 °C 44 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
28 Sept after 31.9 °C 50 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
29 Sept after 31.5 °C 51 % 24 km/h 0.1 mm High 26
30 Sept after 30.3 °C 59 % 22 km/h 0.3 mm High 22
1 Oct after 31.0 °C 54 % 28 km/h 0.3 mm High 22
2 Oct after 30.1 °C 64 % 27 km/h 11.3 mm Very low 2

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 13 Aug 2017
After · 27 Sept 2017

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

Detections table · 863Every 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 timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Australia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Tiwi Islands fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 20 August 2017 and 20 September 2017: 32 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 20,671 hectares (206.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Tiwi Islands (20,806 ha, 2.8 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 32.3 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, 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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

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
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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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 863 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 2015, 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.