How long did the West Arnhem fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 6 October 2019 to 3 November 2019 (29 days). The perimeter dates it from 6 October 2019 to 1 November 2019.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 33,593 hectares (335.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered West Arnhem (33,748 ha, 0.7 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.3 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 53, 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 · 2019-10-06 → 2019-11-03

West Arnhem fire, 6 October 2019 West Arnhem

Out · last detection 4 Nov 2019, 15:59 UTC

The fire started on 6 October 2019 in West Arnhem, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 29 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 33,593 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 314th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3514 with a page). Number 89 in Australia in 2019, of 802.

Compare with…

Suggestions: West Arnhem · 2018 West Arnhem · 2016 West Arnhem · 2021 West Arnhem · 2019

Burnt area: 33,593ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 29days; 6 Oct 2019 – 3 Nov 2019
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 6 Oct; 2019
Heat detections: 1,257; in a single hotspot: 132 MW
Danger at start: 38; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 388MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Oct3 Nov

Play back 4 Nov 2019

How it evolved, day by day

6 Oct 11 Oct 16 Oct 21 Oct 26 Oct 1 Nov

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

The weather it burned in

37°high

49km/h · peak gust

15%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 7.4 mm on 5 Nov.

This area had burned before

71% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 8,000 ha in 2016, 4,524 ha in 2017, 17,730 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 23,725 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 21% of the area of London (336 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

33,748 ha reached on 6 Oct

0.7 %

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)
6 Oct	33.3 °C	31 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
7 Oct	34.3 °C	29 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
8 Oct	35.0 °C	32 %	43 km/h	0.2 mm	Very high 41
9 Oct	35.7 °C	25 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
10 Oct	35.1 °C	28 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
11 Oct	36.9 °C	15 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
12 Oct	36.2 °C	22 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
13 Oct	35.1 °C	24 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
14 Oct	35.5 °C	20 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
15 Oct	35.1 °C	23 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
16 Oct	35.3 °C	29 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
17 Oct	34.6 °C	33 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
18 Oct	35.0 °C	34 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
19 Oct	36.4 °C	31 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
20 Oct	36.7 °C	29 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
21 Oct	37.3 °C	16 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
22 Oct	33.0 °C	38 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
23 Oct	33.2 °C	40 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
24 Oct	33.8 °C	38 %	41 km/h	0.2 mm	High 38
25 Oct	34.6 °C	36 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
26 Oct	35.6 °C	31 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
27 Oct	32.9 °C	51 %	34 km/h	1.2 mm	Moderate 19
28 Oct	33.5 °C	42 %	37 km/h	0.9 mm	High 25
29 Oct	35.4 °C	31 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
30 Oct	34.8 °C	34 %	36 km/h	0.2 mm	High 36
31 Oct	34.1 °C	43 %	32 km/h	0.6 mm	High 29
1 Nov	34.1 °C	40 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
2 Nov	33.8 °C	37 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
3 Nov	34.9 °C	33 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
4 Nov after	34.0 °C	37 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
5 Nov after	32.0 °C	53 %	35 km/h	7.4 mm	Very low 5

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 29 Sept 2019

After · 10 Nov 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 · 1,257Every 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 6 October 2019 to 3 November 2019 (29 days). The perimeter dates it from 6 October 2019 to 1 November 2019.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 33,593 hectares (335.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered West Arnhem (33,748 ha, 0.7 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.3 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 53, 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: 1 November 2019 → 3 November 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 6 October 2019 to 1 November 2019. 1,257 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