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West Arnhem fire, 13 July 2019 West Arnhem, Unincorporated NT

Out · last detection 23 Jul 2019, 04:02 UTC

The fire started on 13 July 2019 in West Arnhem, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 18,824 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 670th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3518 with a page). Number 174 in Australia in 2019, of 802.

Compare with…

Suggestions: West Arnhem · 2017West Arnhem · 2018West Arnhem · 2026West Arnhem · 2026

Burnt area
18,824ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
11days
13 Jul 2019 – 23 Jul 2019
Municipalities hit
2
local government areas
Started on
13 Jul
2019
Heat detections
873
in a single hotspot: 48 MW
Danger at start
43
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
422MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 13 Jul23 Jul
23 Jul 2019

How it evolved, day by day

13 Jul 2019 · 155 MW · 11 14 Jul 2019 · 436 MW · 53 15 Jul 2019 · 2,011 MW · 367 16 Jul 2019 · 564 MW · 158 17 Jul 2019 · 540 MW · 132 18 Jul 2019 · 342 MW · 57 19 Jul 2019 · 316 MW · 49 20 Jul 2019 · 203 MW · 32 21 Jul 2019 · 54 MW · 9 22 Jul 2019 · 15 MW · 4 23 Jul 2019 · 6 MW · 1
13 Jul 15 Jul 17 Jul 19 Jul 21 Jul 23 Jul

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

The weather it burned in

34°high
49km/h · peak gust
14%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

70% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,311 ha in 2016, 5,745 ha in 2017, 6,936 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 13,265 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 12% of the area of London (188 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
    18,976 ha reached on 13 Jul
    0.4 %
  2. Unincorporated NT
    5 ha
    0.0 %

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)
13 Jul 31.9 °C 26 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
14 Jul 29.8 °C 21 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
15 Jul 29.2 °C 18 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
16 Jul 30.6 °C 15 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
17 Jul 31.2 °C 14 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
18 Jul 31.4 °C 19 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
19 Jul 32.6 °C 16 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
20 Jul 33.8 °C 16 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
21 Jul 32.9 °C 15 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
22 Jul 32.7 °C 17 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
23 Jul 32.8 °C 15 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
24 Jul after 32.4 °C 22 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
25 Jul after 32.9 °C 31 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
26 Jul after 32.4 °C 21 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
27 Jul after 32.1 °C 25 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
28 Jul after 32.6 °C 26 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
29 Jul after 33.1 °C 24 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
30 Jul after 33.2 °C 25 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
31 Jul after 33.1 °C 22 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
1 Aug after 32.3 °C 22 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
2 Aug after 30.6 °C 15 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 6 Jul 2019
After · 30 Jul 2019

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 · 873Every 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 13 July 2019 to 23 July 2019 (11 days). The perimeter dates it from 14 July 2019 to 22 July 2019.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 18,824 hectares (188.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: West Arnhem (18,976 ha, 0.4 %); Unincorporated NT (5 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.8 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 54, 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 22 July 2019 → 23 July 2019.
  2. Start date: 14 July 2019 → 13 July 2019.

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 14 July 2019 to 22 July 2019. 873 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.