West Arnhem fire, 9 May 2018 West Arnhem
The fire started on 9 May 2018 in West Arnhem, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,484 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 3102th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3508 with a page). Number 821 in Australia in 2018, of 924.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 5,484ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 7days
- 9 May 2018 – 15 May 2018
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- local government areas
- Started on
- 9 May
- 2018
- Heat detections
- 212
- in a single hotspot: 88 MW
- Danger at start
- 44
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 299MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 27 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
24% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,133 ha in 2016, 303 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,312 ha that had burned before.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
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 started5,530 ha reached on 9 May0.1 %
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 2020Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9 May | 35.0 °C | 22 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 10 May | 34.4 °C | 28 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 11 May | 34.3 °C | 20 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 12 May | 31.6 °C | 19 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 13 May | 31.9 °C | 19 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 14 May | 31.6 °C | 19 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 15 May | 31.4 °C | 15 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 16 May after | 30.7 °C | 16 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 17 May after | 30.6 °C | 17 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 18 May after | 31.6 °C | 23 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 19 May after | 31.8 °C | 24 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 20 May after | 33.5 °C | 32 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 21 May after | 34.0 °C | 32 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 22 May after | 33.2 °C | 25 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 23 May after | 33.6 °C | 26 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · 212Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 22,784 haWest Arnhem6 July 2026 · 13 days · 18 km away
- 72,354 haWest Arnhem15 August 2026 · 62 days · 26 km away
- 22,277 haWest ArnhemSeptember 2024 · 29 days · 28 km away
- 25,303 haWest Arnhem31 August 2025 · 22 days · 34 km away
- 22,209 haUnincorporated NTMay 2020 · 12 days · 35 km away
- 23,580 haWest Arnhem2 May 2022 · 9 days · 39 km away
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 9 May 2018 to 15 May 2018 (7 days). The perimeter dates it from 9 May 2018 to 13 May 2018.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,484 hectares (54.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered West Arnhem (5,530 ha, 0.1 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 35.0 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 49, 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.
- Last day with fire: 13 May 2018 → 15 May 2018.
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
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 9 May 2018 to 13 May 2018. 212 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.
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.