West Arnhem fire, 2 May 2022 West Arnhem, Unincorporated NT
The fire started on 2 May 2022 in West Arnhem, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 23,580 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 492th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3511 with a page). Number 43 in Australia in 2022, of 566.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 23,580ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 9days
- 2 May 2022 – 10 May 2022
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- local government areas
- Started on
- 2 May
- 2022
- Heat detections
- 758
- in a single hotspot: 112 MW
- Danger at start
- 27
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 1.4GW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.3 mm on 12 May.
This area had burned before
90% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 5,113 ha in 2016, 6,722 ha in 2017, 8,570 ha in 2018, 5,666 ha in 2019, 11,858 ha in 2020, 6,865 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 21,333 ha that had burned before.
- 4,607 ha Unincorporated NT fire, May 2020 22,209 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,288 ha West Arnhem fire, June 2016 7,097 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,712 ha West Arnhem fire, July 2019 25,194 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 342 ha West Arnhem fire, September 2019 12,616 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
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 started22,973 ha reached on 2 May0.5 %
-
809 ha reached on 2 May0.0 %
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 2020Inside 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 May | 34.6 °C | 32 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 3 May | 35.7 °C | 33 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 4 May | 35.6 °C | 31 % | 34 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 26 |
| 5 May | 35.7 °C | 33 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 6 May | 33.7 °C | 32 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 7 May | 33.4 °C | 24 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 8 May | 34.0 °C | 25 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 9 May | 35.9 °C | 30 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 10 May | 34.8 °C | 40 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 11 May after | 34.5 °C | 41 % | 31 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 27 |
| 12 May after | 33.2 °C | 51 % | 25 km/h | 1.3 mm | Moderate 12 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · 758Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 25,194 haWest Arnhem20 July 2019 · 25 days · 19 km away
- 22,782 haVictoria Daly10 June 2022 · 14 days · 21 km away
- 24,232 haVictoria DalyJuly 2020 · 16 days · 23 km away
- 42,024 haWest Arnhem18 July 2026 · 22 days · 28 km away
- 32,790 haVictoria Daly24 August 2020 · 26 days · 35 km away
- 22,784 haWest Arnhem6 July 2026 · 13 days · 37 km away
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 2 May 2022 to 10 May 2022 (9 days). The perimeter dates it from 2 May 2022 to 5 May 2022.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 23,580 hectares (235.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: West Arnhem (22,973 ha, 0.5 %); Unincorporated NT (809 ha, 0.0 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 35.9 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 35, class 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.
- Last day with fire: 5 May 2022 → 10 May 2022.
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
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 2 May 2022 to 5 May 2022. 758 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.
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.