Skip to content
worldfires
en
AU · Australia · →

West Arnhem fire, 4 June 2018 West Arnhem

Out · last detection 24 Jun 2018, 16:36 UTC

The fire started on 4 June 2018 in West Arnhem, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 21 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,899 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 2848th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3515 with a page). Number 759 in Australia in 2018, of 923.

Compare with…

Suggestions: West Arnhem · 2026West Arnhem · 2023West Arnhem · 2019West Arnhem · 2020

Burnt area
5,899ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
21days
4 Jun 2018 – 24 Jun 2018
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
4 Jun
2018
Heat detections
278
in a single hotspot: 35 MW
Danger at start
33
High · FWI index
Average daily power
68MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Jun24 Jun
24 Jun 2018

How it evolved, day by day

4 Jun 2018 · 28 MW · 5 5 Jun 2018 · 99 MW · 14 6 Jun 2018 · 34 MW · 3 9 Jun 2018 · 4 MW · 4 10 Jun 2018 · 67 MW · 10 11 Jun 2018 · 77 MW · 17 12 Jun 2018 · 18 MW · 4 13 Jun 2018 · 52 MW · 4 14 Jun 2018 · 19 MW · 6 15 Jun 2018 · 7 MW · 2 16 Jun 2018 · 39 MW · 16 17 Jun 2018 · 187 MW · 42 18 Jun 2018 · 109 MW · 31 19 Jun 2018 · 66 MW · 28 20 Jun 2018 · 79 MW · 38 21 Jun 2018 · 231 MW · 29 22 Jun 2018 · 173 MW · 22 23 Jun 2018 · 9 MW · 1 24 Jun 2018 · 2 MW · 2
4 Jun 9 Jun 12 Jun 15 Jun 18 Jun 21 Jun 24 Jun

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

The weather it burned in

31°high
55km/h · peak gust
24%lowest humidity

It had gone 52 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

43% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,478 ha in 2016, 1,094 ha in 2017.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.7% of the area of London (59 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
    5,937 ha reached on 4 Jun
    0.1 %

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 2020
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside 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)
11 Jun 30.8 °C 41 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
12 Jun 31.0 °C 39 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
13 Jun 31.1 °C 36 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
14 Jun 30.8 °C 42 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
15 Jun 29.9 °C 43 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
16 Jun 30.8 °C 36 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
17 Jun 29.7 °C 32 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
18 Jun 29.9 °C 35 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
19 Jun 30.5 °C 38 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
20 Jun 31.0 °C 30 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
21 Jun 30.3 °C 31 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
22 Jun 30.1 °C 24 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
23 Jun 29.4 °C 32 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
24 Jun 30.2 °C 37 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
25 Jun after 30.5 °C 39 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
26 Jun after 31.1 °C 40 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
27 Jun after 30.7 °C 36 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
28 Jun after 30.3 °C 36 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
29 Jun after 29.4 °C 49 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
30 Jun after 30.3 °C 46 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
1 Jul after 29.4 °C 50 % 60 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
2 Jul after 32.4 °C 37 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
3 Jul after 31.3 °C 36 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
4 Jul after 31.1 °C 33 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 28 May 2018
After · 1 Jul 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 · 278Every 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 4 June 2018 to 24 June 2018 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 11 June 2018 to 24 June 2018.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,899 hectares (59.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered West Arnhem (5,937 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 31.1 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, 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. Start date: 11 June 2018 → 4 June 2018.

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 11 June 2018 to 24 June 2018. 278 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.

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.