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AU · Australia · –

Victoria Daly fire, 4 July 2026 Victoria Daly, Unincorporated NT

Out · last detection 18 Jul 2026, 05:04 UTC

The fire started on 4 July 2026 in Victoria Daly, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,194 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

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.

Burnt area
6,194ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
15days
4 Jul 2026 – 18 Jul 2026
Municipalities hit
2
local government areas
Started on
4 Jul
2026
Heat detections
213
in a single hotspot: 47 MW
Danger at start
45
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
81MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Jul18 Jul
18 Jul 2026

How it evolved, day by day

4 Jul 2026 · 10 MW · 2 5 Jul 2026 · 56 MW · 6 6 Jul 2026 · 9 MW · 3 7 Jul 2026 · 67 MW · 10 8 Jul 2026 · 47 MW · 11 9 Jul 2026 · 47 MW · 9 10 Jul 2026 · 100 MW · 19 11 Jul 2026 · 353 MW · 54 12 Jul 2026 · 293 MW · 35 13 Jul 2026 · 38 MW · 6 14 Jul 2026 · 35 MW · 14 15 Jul 2026 · 104 MW · 28 16 Jul 2026 · 17 MW · 7 17 Jul 2026 · 18 MW · 6 18 Jul 2026 · 14 MW · 3
4 Jul 7 Jul 11 Jul 16 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
21%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

98% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 663 ha in 2016, 3,522 ha in 2017, 1,453 ha in 2018, 3,182 ha in 2019, 2,391 ha in 2020, 1,845 ha in 2021, 2,647 ha in 2022, 835 ha in 2023, 2,650 ha in 2024, 2,880 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,076 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.9% of the area of London (62 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. Victoria Daly where it started
    6,140 ha reached on 4 Jul
    0.0 %
  2. 23 ha
    0.0 %

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 2025
Built-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)
4 Jul 33.9 °C 28 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
5 Jul 32.3 °C 31 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
6 Jul 31.4 °C 30 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
7 Jul 31.1 °C 30 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
8 Jul 31.7 °C 30 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
9 Jul 31.4 °C 36 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
10 Jul 31.9 °C 31 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
11 Jul 31.5 °C 28 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
12 Jul 31.9 °C 25 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
13 Jul 32.2 °C 31 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
14 Jul 31.6 °C 32 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
15 Jul 30.6 °C 30 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
16 Jul 30.6 °C 30 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
17 Jul 29.7 °C 32 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
18 Jul 28.9 °C 21 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
19 Jul after 29.1 °C 20 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
20 Jul after 29.6 °C 22 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
21 Jul after 29.8 °C 29 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
22 Jul after 30.8 °C 17 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
23 Jul after 31.9 °C 25 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
24 Jul after 31.3 °C 28 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
25 Jul after 29.8 °C 23 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 67
26 Jul after 29.1 °C 28 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
27 Jul after 29.1 °C 21 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
28 Jul after 29.3 °C 16 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 27 Jun 2026
After · 25 Jul 2026

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 · Copernicus

On 28 June 2026 the air beside the fire reached 42 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 27: 1.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak42 µg/m³
Days over the guideline4 days
PM1044 µg/m³
Optical depth0.43
25 Jun1 Jul7 Jul13 Jul19 Jul
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 · 213Every 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 Victoria Daly fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 4 July 2026 to 18 July 2026 (15 days). The perimeter dates it from 4 July 2026 to 14 July 2026.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,194 hectares (61.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Victoria Daly (6,140 ha, 0.0 %); Unincorporated NT (23 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.9 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 58, 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 14 July 2026 → 18 July 2026.

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
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.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 4 July 2026 to 14 July 2026. 213 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.

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.