How long did the West Arnhem fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 21 July 2016 to 14 August 2016 (25 days). The perimeter dates it from 21 July 2016 to 11 August 2016.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 9,715 hectares (97.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered West Arnhem (9,800 ha, 0.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 32.8 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % 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.

AU · Australia · 2016-07-21 → 2016-08-14

West Arnhem fire, 21 July 2016 West Arnhem

Out · last detection 10 Aug 2016, 16:44 UTC

The fire started on 21 July 2016 in West Arnhem, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 25 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,715 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1514th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3503 with a page). Number 174 in Australia in 2016, of 427.

Compare with…

Suggestions: West Arnhem · 2023 Roper Gulf · 2019

Burnt area: 9,715ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 25days; 21 Jul 2016 – 14 Aug 2016
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 21 Jul; 2016
Heat detections: 334; in a single hotspot: 51 MW
Danger at start: 30; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 115MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 21 Jul14 Aug

Play back 10 Aug 2016

How it evolved, day by day

21 Jul 24 Jul 25 Jul 27 Jul 30 Jul 2 Aug 6 Aug 9 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

53km/h · peak gust

21%lowest humidity

It had gone 7 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?

It burned the equivalent of 6.1% of the area of London (97 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

West Arnhem where it started

9,800 ha reached on 21 Jul

0.2 %

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)
21 Jul	31.3 °C	36 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
22 Jul	31.8 °C	36 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
23 Jul	32.8 °C	33 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
24 Jul	32.0 °C	34 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
25 Jul	30.4 °C	35 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
26 Jul	31.2 °C	29 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
27 Jul	30.5 °C	28 %	51 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
28 Jul	29.8 °C	32 %	53 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
29 Jul	30.4 °C	26 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
30 Jul	31.0 °C	23 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
31 Jul	31.2 °C	26 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
1 Aug	32.1 °C	21 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
2 Aug	32.0 °C	22 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
3 Aug	27.4 °C	25 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
4 Aug	26.4 °C	21 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
5 Aug	27.6 °C	27 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
6 Aug	28.5 °C	23 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
7 Aug	29.9 °C	24 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
8 Aug	30.4 °C	27 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
9 Aug	31.1 °C	25 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
10 Aug	31.3 °C	29 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
11 Aug	31.8 °C	27 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
12 Aug	31.6 °C	23 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
13 Aug	30.7 °C	28 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
14 Aug	30.9 °C	26 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
15 Aug after	31.0 °C	20 %	51 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
16 Aug after	31.5 °C	21 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
17 Aug after	31.3 °C	27 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
18 Aug after	30.0 °C	40 %	36 km/h	0.3 mm	High 34
19 Aug after	30.8 °C	31 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
20 Aug after	32.8 °C	22 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
21 Aug after	32.6 °C	19 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
22 Aug after	32.1 °C	32 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
23 Aug after	33.5 °C	29 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
24 Aug after	33.5 °C	28 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 14 Jul 2016

After · 21 Aug 2016

Before After

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 · 334Every 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

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 21 July 2016 to 14 August 2016 (25 days). The perimeter dates it from 21 July 2016 to 11 August 2016.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 9,715 hectares (97.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered West Arnhem (9,800 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 32.8 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

25 October 2026 Last day with fire: 11 August 2016 → 14 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.

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What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 21 July 2016 to 11 August 2016. 334 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.

Where it burned