Skip to content
worldfires
en
AU · Australia · →

West Arnhem fire, 27 July 2016 West Arnhem, East Arnhem

Out · last detection 1 Aug 2016, 05:05 UTC

The fire started on 27 July 2016 in West Arnhem, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,628 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 2441th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3508 with a page). Number 276 in Australia in 2016, of 427.

Compare with…

Suggestions: West Arnhem · 2023West Arnhem · 2019Roper Gulf · 2018

Burnt area
6,628ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
6days
27 Jul 2016 – 1 Aug 2016
Municipalities hit
2
local government areas
Started on
27 Jul
2016
Heat detections
261
in a single hotspot: 86 MW
Danger at start
42
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
688MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 27 Jul1 Aug
1 Aug 2016

How it evolved, day by day

27 Jul 2016 · 2,286 MW · 169 28 Jul 2016 · 904 MW · 65 29 Jul 2016 · 245 MW · 25 30 Jul 2016 · 2 MW · 1 1 Aug 2016 · 3 MW · 1
27 Jul 28 Jul 29 Jul 30 Jul 1 Aug

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

The weather it burned in

33°high
52km/h · peak gust
24%lowest humidity

It had gone 14 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4.2% of the area of London (66 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. West Arnhem where it started
    5,250 ha reached on 27 Jul
    0.1 %
  2. East Arnhem
    1,430 ha reached on 27 Jul
    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 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)
27 Jul 31.6 °C 29 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
28 Jul 31.1 °C 32 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
29 Jul 31.4 °C 30 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
30 Jul 32.1 °C 26 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
31 Jul 32.4 °C 27 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
1 Aug 33.3 °C 26 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
2 Aug after 33.0 °C 24 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
3 Aug after 28.4 °C 29 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
4 Aug after 27.7 °C 26 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
5 Aug after 28.9 °C 29 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
6 Aug after 30.0 °C 24 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
7 Aug after 31.2 °C 29 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
8 Aug after 31.3 °C 27 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
9 Aug after 32.0 °C 27 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
10 Aug after 32.5 °C 31 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
11 Aug after 32.3 °C 30 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
12 Aug after 32.3 °C 25 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
13 Aug after 31.0 °C 30 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
14 Aug after 31.5 °C 27 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
15 Aug after 31.5 °C 21 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 20 Jul 2016
After · 8 Aug 2016

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 · 261Every 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 West Arnhem fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 27 July 2016 to 1 August 2016 (6 days). The perimeter dates it from 27 July 2016 to 30 July 2016.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,628 hectares (66.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: West Arnhem (5,250 ha, 0.1 %); East Arnhem (1,430 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.3 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 52 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 30 July 2016 → 1 August 2016.

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.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 27 July 2016 to 30 July 2016. 261 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.