How long did the West Arnhem fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 10 October 2022 to 28 October 2022 (19 days). The perimeter dates it from 10 October 2022 to 21 October 2022.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,876 hectares (78.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered West Arnhem (7,912 ha, 0.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 36.7 °C, humidity dropped to 30 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 34, 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.

AU · Australia · 2022-10-10 → 2022-10-28

West Arnhem fire, 10 October 2022 West Arnhem

Out · last detection 28 Oct 2022, 04:34 UTC

The fire started on 10 October 2022 in West Arnhem, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 19 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,876 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1967th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3508 with a page). Number 284 in Australia in 2022, of 566.

Compare with…

Suggestions: West Arnhem · 2020 West Arnhem · 2018 West Arnhem · 2016 West Arnhem · 2023

Burnt area: 7,876ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 19days; 10 Oct 2022 – 28 Oct 2022
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 10 Oct; 2022
Heat detections: 423; in a single hotspot: 195 MW
Danger at start: 29; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 312MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 10 Oct28 Oct

Play back 28 Oct 2022

How it evolved, day by day

10 Oct 13 Oct 16 Oct 19 Oct 23 Oct 27 Oct

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

30%lowest humidity

It had gone 10 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.7 mm on 2 Nov.

This area had burned before

97% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,884 ha in 2016, 4,182 ha in 2017, 3,242 ha in 2018, 6,877 ha in 2020, 57 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 7,649 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 5% of the area of London (79 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

7,912 ha reached on 10 Oct

0.2 %

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)
10 Oct	35.8 °C	38 %	49 km/h	0.3 mm	High 29
11 Oct	36.7 °C	30 %	44 km/h	0.5 mm	High 34
12 Oct	34.7 °C	45 %	29 km/h	1.2 mm	Moderate 17
13 Oct	33.7 °C	49 %	34 km/h	1.4 mm	Moderate 15
14 Oct	33.8 °C	47 %	41 km/h	0.9 mm	Moderate 18
15 Oct	34.1 °C	43 %	46 km/h	0.1 mm	High 26
16 Oct	34.2 °C	42 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
17 Oct	32.7 °C	57 %	48 km/h	3.1 mm	Low 8
18 Oct	33.3 °C	46 %	35 km/h	0.3 mm	Moderate 17
19 Oct	34.4 °C	47 %	32 km/h	0.4 mm	Moderate 20
20 Oct	34.7 °C	50 %	36 km/h	1.1 mm	Moderate 16
21 Oct	36.2 °C	43 %	37 km/h	1.7 mm	Moderate 17
22 Oct	35.8 °C	48 %	29 km/h	3.3 mm	Low 8
23 Oct	36.4 °C	41 %	34 km/h	0.9 mm	Moderate 20
24 Oct	36.3 °C	45 %	38 km/h	0.2 mm	High 22
25 Oct	36.1 °C	48 %	38 km/h	4.3 mm	Low 8
26 Oct	34.8 °C	49 %	39 km/h	0.8 mm	Moderate 15
27 Oct	35.0 °C	41 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
28 Oct	35.3 °C	42 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
29 Oct after	35.9 °C	36 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
30 Oct after	36.1 °C	37 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
31 Oct after	35.9 °C	39 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
1 Nov after	38.5 °C	34 %	37 km/h	0.1 mm	High 29
2 Nov after	37.8 °C	43 %	38 km/h	4.7 mm	Low 10

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 3 Oct 2022

After · 4 Nov 2022

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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 15 October 2022 the air beside the fire reached 56 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 25: 1.7 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak56 µg/m³

Days over the guideline6 days

PM1082 µg/m³

Optical depth0.66

WHO 15

89101112131415161718192021222324

Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 423Every 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 10 October 2022 to 28 October 2022 (19 days). The perimeter dates it from 10 October 2022 to 21 October 2022.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,876 hectares (78.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered West Arnhem (7,912 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 36.7 °C, humidity dropped to 30 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 34, 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

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: 21 October 2022 → 28 October 2022.

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?

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.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 10 October 2022 to 21 October 2022. 423 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