How long did the West Arnhem fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 15 July 2019 to 21 August 2019 (38 days). The perimeter dates it from 15 July 2019 to 16 August 2019.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 50,917 hectares (509.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered West Arnhem (51,347 ha, 1.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 34.1 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 56, 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.

AU · Australia · 2019-07-15 → 2019-08-21

West Arnhem fire, 15 July 2019 West Arnhem

Out · last detection 16 Aug 2019, 15:59 UTC

The fire started on 15 July 2019 in West Arnhem, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 38 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 50,917 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 171th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3521 with a page). Number 54 in Australia in 2019, of 802.

Compare with…

Suggestions: West Arnhem · 2017 West Arnhem · 2016 West Arnhem · 2018 West Arnhem · 2018

Burnt area: 50,917ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 38days; 15 Jul 2019 – 21 Aug 2019
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 15 Jul; 2019
Heat detections: 1,931; in a single hotspot: 264 MW
Danger at start: 45; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 423MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 Jul21 Aug

Play back 16 Aug 2019

How it evolved, day by day

15 Jul 20 Jul 25 Jul 30 Jul 4 Aug 9 Aug 13 Aug 14 Aug

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

55km/h · peak gust

13%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

56% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 6,649 ha in 2016, 15,585 ha in 2017, 16,363 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 28,516 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 32% of the area of London (509 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

West Arnhem where it started

51,347 ha reached on 15 Jul

1.0 %

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)
15 Jul	28.1 °C	20 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
16 Jul	29.5 °C	15 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
17 Jul	30.0 °C	15 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
18 Jul	30.1 °C	22 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
19 Jul	31.2 °C	18 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
20 Jul	32.5 °C	16 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
21 Jul	32.2 °C	13 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
22 Jul	31.3 °C	16 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
23 Jul	31.3 °C	18 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
24 Jul	31.2 °C	24 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
25 Jul	31.6 °C	30 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
26 Jul	31.2 °C	21 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
27 Jul	30.9 °C	26 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
28 Jul	31.4 °C	26 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
29 Jul	31.8 °C	24 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
30 Jul	31.9 °C	24 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
31 Jul	31.7 °C	23 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
1 Aug	30.9 °C	21 %	55 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
2 Aug	29.3 °C	17 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
3 Aug	30.0 °C	23 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
4 Aug	30.9 °C	27 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
5 Aug	31.5 °C	31 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
6 Aug	32.1 °C	27 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
7 Aug	32.2 °C	21 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
8 Aug	32.9 °C	24 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
9 Aug	33.9 °C	22 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
10 Aug	33.5 °C	20 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
11 Aug	31.7 °C	13 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
12 Aug	29.4 °C	13 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
13 Aug	28.7 °C	14 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
14 Aug	30.3 °C	17 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
15 Aug	31.8 °C	29 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
16 Aug	33.2 °C	23 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
17 Aug	31.4 °C	41 %	18 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
18 Aug	32.3 °C	38 %	24 km/h	0.1 mm	High 32
19 Aug	34.1 °C	31 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
20 Aug	30.7 °C	17 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
21 Aug	30.1 °C	14 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
22 Aug after	31.7 °C	23 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
23 Aug after	31.8 °C	17 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
24 Aug after	32.9 °C	14 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
25 Aug after	33.1 °C	16 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
26 Aug after	32.6 °C	18 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
27 Aug after	32.6 °C	15 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
28 Aug after	32.9 °C	9 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 62
29 Aug after	29.9 °C	8 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 60
30 Aug after	31.1 °C	9 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 55
31 Aug after	32.8 °C	11 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 8 Jul 2019

After · 28 Aug 2019

Before After

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 · 1,931Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

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 15 July 2019 to 21 August 2019 (38 days). The perimeter dates it from 15 July 2019 to 16 August 2019.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 50,917 hectares (509.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered West Arnhem (51,347 ha, 1.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 34.1 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 56, 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

26 October 2026 Last day with fire: 16 August 2019 → 21 August 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.

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What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 15 July 2019 to 16 August 2019. 1,931 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.

Where it burned