Skip to content
worldfires
en
AU · Australia · →

Unincorporated NT fire, June 2019 Unincorporated NT

Out · last detection 11 Jul 2019, 04:27 UTC

The fire started on 21 June 2019 in Unincorporated NT, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 21 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 19,546 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 634th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3519 with a page). Number 166 in Australia in 2019, of 802.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Unincorporated NT · 2018Unincorporated NT · 2016West Arnhem · 2026Unincorporated NT · 2020

Burnt area
19,546ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
21days
21 Jun 2019 – 11 Jul 2019
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
21 Jun
2019
Heat detections
590
in a single hotspot: 186 MW
Danger at start
38
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
295MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 21 Jun11 Jul
11 Jul 2019

How it evolved, day by day

21 Jun 2019 · 3 MW · 4 22 Jun 2019 · 16 MW · 13 23 Jun 2019 · 609 MW · 70 24 Jun 2019 · 999 MW · 95 25 Jun 2019 · 286 MW · 38 26 Jun 2019 · 251 MW · 47 27 Jun 2019 · 449 MW · 51 28 Jun 2019 · 11 MW · 2 2 Jul 2019 · 22 MW · 7 3 Jul 2019 · 200 MW · 29 4 Jul 2019 · 1,655 MW · 63 5 Jul 2019 · 143 MW · 30 6 Jul 2019 · 172 MW · 20 7 Jul 2019 · 158 MW · 40 8 Jul 2019 · 173 MW · 50 9 Jul 2019 · 115 MW · 25 10 Jul 2019 · 40 MW · 5 11 Jul 2019 · 5 MW · 1
21 Jun 24 Jun 27 Jun 3 Jul 4 Jul 6 Jul 9 Jul

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

The weather it burned in

34°high
46km/h · peak gust
12%lowest humidity

It had gone 47 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

65% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,819 ha in 2016, 6,287 ha in 2017, 6,070 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 12,692 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 12% of the area of London (195 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. Unincorporated NT where it started
    19,127 ha reached on 21 Jun
    1.0 %

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 2020
Built-up area0.16 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.16 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, 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)
21 Jun 29.9 °C 21 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
22 Jun 29.7 °C 24 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
23 Jun 30.1 °C 18 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
24 Jun 30.1 °C 12 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
25 Jun 30.6 °C 14 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
26 Jun 29.9 °C 16 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
27 Jun 30.5 °C 22 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
28 Jun 30.6 °C 27 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
29 Jun 32.5 °C 26 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
30 Jun 33.7 °C 34 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
1 Jul 32.7 °C 29 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
2 Jul 31.8 °C 21 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
3 Jul 31.1 °C 22 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
4 Jul 30.4 °C 21 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
5 Jul 30.3 °C 21 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
6 Jul 30.3 °C 23 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
7 Jul 31.3 °C 19 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
8 Jul 32.1 °C 22 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
9 Jul 32.2 °C 28 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
10 Jul 31.4 °C 28 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
11 Jul 30.9 °C 26 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
12 Jul after 32.1 °C 30 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
13 Jul after 31.9 °C 25 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
14 Jul after 29.6 °C 21 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
15 Jul after 29.1 °C 18 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
16 Jul after 30.4 °C 15 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
17 Jul after 30.9 °C 15 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
18 Jul after 31.2 °C 18 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
19 Jul after 32.4 °C 17 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
20 Jul after 33.5 °C 17 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
21 Jul after 32.4 °C 16 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 14 Jun 2019
After · 18 Jul 2019

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 · 590Every 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 Unincorporated NT fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 21 June 2019 to 11 July 2019 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 22 June 2019 to 10 July 2019.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 19,546 hectares (195.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Unincorporated NT (19,127 ha, 1.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.7 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 10 July 2019 → 11 July 2019.
  2. Start date: 22 June 2019 → 21 June 2019.

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
What do you think is wrong?

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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 22 June 2019 to 10 July 2019. 590 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 2020, 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.