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West Arnhem fire, 1 June 2018 West Arnhem

Out · last detection 11 Jun 2018, 04:33 UTC

The fire started on 1 June 2018 in West Arnhem, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,048 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1456th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3496 with a page). Number 382 in Australia in 2018, of 923.

Burnt area
10,048ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
11days
1 Jun 2018 – 11 Jun 2018
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
1 Jun
2018
Heat detections
431
in a single hotspot: 102 MW
Danger at start
45
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
6.2GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

11 Jun 2018
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 1 Jun11 Jun

How it evolved, day by day

1234567891011

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
23%lowest humidity

It had gone 40 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

75% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 6,154 ha in 2016, 2,421 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 7,577 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. West Arnhem where it started
    10,099 ha reached on 1 Jun
    0.2 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

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)
30 May 32.6 °C 35 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
31 May 32.1 °C 37 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
1 Jun 32.0 °C 35 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
2 Jun 31.0 °C 33 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
3 Jun 30.8 °C 36 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
4 Jun 29.7 °C 23 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
5 Jun 28.8 °C 26 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
6 Jun 28.7 °C 40 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
7 Jun 29.9 °C 42 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
8 Jun 30.4 °C 42 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
9 Jun 31.2 °C 41 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
10 Jun 31.2 °C 39 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
11 Jun 30.4 °C 43 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
12 Jun after 30.8 °C 42 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
13 Jun after 30.9 °C 43 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
14 Jun after 30.6 °C 47 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
15 Jun after 30.2 °C 43 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
16 Jun after 32.1 °C 35 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
17 Jun after 31.1 °C 32 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
18 Jun after 31.5 °C 33 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
19 Jun after 31.6 °C 37 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
20 Jun after 31.4 °C 34 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
21 Jun after 31.3 °C 33 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
22 Jun after 31.2 °C 26 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
23 Jun after 30.5 °C 32 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
24 Jun after 30.2 °C 40 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
25 Jun after 30.7 °C 44 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
26 Jun after 32.1 °C 40 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
27 Jun after 31.6 °C 36 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
28 Jun after 31.5 °C 36 % 48 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 · 25 May 2018
After · 18 Jun 2018

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 · 431Every 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 1 June 2018 and 11 June 2018: 11 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 10,048 hectares (100.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered West Arnhem (10,099 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 32.6 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 45, 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

Satellite cross-check

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.

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.