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West Arnhem fire, 31 August 2017 West Arnhem

Out · last detection 22 Sept 2017, 04:46 UTC

The fire started on 31 August 2017 in West Arnhem, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 23 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 12,346 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1138th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3508 with a page). Number 244 in Australia in 2017, of 862.

Compare with…

Suggestions: West Arnhem · 2016West Arnhem · 2016West Arnhem · 2022West Arnhem · 2019

Burnt area
12,346ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
23days
31 Aug 2017 – 22 Sept 2017
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
31 Aug
2017
Heat detections
445
in a single hotspot: 94 MW
Danger at start
46
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
217MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 31 Aug22 Sept
22 Sept 2017

How it evolved, day by day

31 Aug 2017 · 221 MW · 9 1 Sept 2017 · 79 MW · 11 2 Sept 2017 · 230 MW · 12 4 Sept 2017 · 7 MW · 3 5 Sept 2017 · 150 MW · 21 6 Sept 2017 · 82 MW · 13 7 Sept 2017 · 112 MW · 12 8 Sept 2017 · 22 MW · 3 9 Sept 2017 · 540 MW · 62 10 Sept 2017 · 208 MW · 30 11 Sept 2017 · 1,031 MW · 74 12 Sept 2017 · 98 MW · 16 13 Sept 2017 · 543 MW · 41 14 Sept 2017 · 423 MW · 23 15 Sept 2017 · 194 MW · 32 16 Sept 2017 · 418 MW · 49 17 Sept 2017 · 56 MW · 15 19 Sept 2017 · 26 MW · 5 20 Sept 2017 · 40 MW · 3 21 Sept 2017 · 26 MW · 5 22 Sept 2017 · 52 MW · 6
31 Aug 4 Sept 7 Sept 10 Sept 11 Sept 13 Sept 16 Sept 20 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

35°high
51km/h · peak gust
19%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.5 mm on 7 Oct.

This area had burned before

57% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 7,261 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 7.8% of the area of London (123 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
    12,389 ha reached on 31 Aug
    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)
31 Aug 32.6 °C 24 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
1 Sept 33.5 °C 27 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
2 Sept 32.5 °C 33 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
3 Sept 31.9 °C 41 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
4 Sept 32.5 °C 33 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
5 Sept 33.0 °C 29 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
6 Sept 32.8 °C 31 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
7 Sept 34.0 °C 20 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
8 Sept 32.8 °C 19 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
9 Sept 31.6 °C 28 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
10 Sept 31.4 °C 30 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
11 Sept 32.1 °C 29 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
12 Sept 31.2 °C 48 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
13 Sept 31.9 °C 46 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
14 Sept 33.0 °C 42 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
15 Sept 34.8 °C 19 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
16 Sept 32.9 °C 34 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
17 Sept 33.3 °C 26 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
18 Sept 32.7 °C 30 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
19 Sept 32.6 °C 41 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
20 Sept 32.8 °C 46 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
21 Sept 32.6 °C 43 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
22 Sept 32.2 °C 49 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
23 Sept after 32.9 °C 43 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
24 Sept after 32.0 °C 50 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
25 Sept after 32.8 °C 39 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
26 Sept after 33.1 °C 41 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
27 Sept after 32.0 °C 46 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
28 Sept after 32.9 °C 43 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
29 Sept after 33.1 °C 43 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
30 Sept after 32.7 °C 46 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
1 Oct after 32.0 °C 49 % 25 km/h 0.2 mm High 27
2 Oct after 33.1 °C 46 % 29 km/h 0.2 mm High 28
3 Oct after 34.5 °C 42 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
4 Oct after 33.6 °C 44 % 39 km/h 0.5 mm High 32
5 Oct after 33.3 °C 44 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
6 Oct after 33.5 °C 50 % 34 km/h 0.1 mm High 30
7 Oct after 33.9 °C 46 % 45 km/h 1.5 mm High 23

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 24 Aug 2017
After · 29 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 · 445Every 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?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 31 August 2017 and 22 September 2017: 23 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 12,346 hectares (123.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered West Arnhem (12,389 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.8 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, 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 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.

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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. 445 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.