How long did the West Arnhem fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 14 June 2024 to 26 June 2024 (13 days). The perimeter dates it from 14 June 2024 to 19 June 2024.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,263 hectares (52.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: West Arnhem (3,784 ha, 0.1 %); Unincorporated NT (1,481 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 33.7 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, class Very 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 · 2024-06-14 → 2024-06-26

West Arnhem fire, 14 June 2024 West Arnhem, Unincorporated NT

Out · last detection 26 Jun 2024, 04:51 UTC

The fire started on 14 June 2024 in West Arnhem, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,263 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 3286th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3518 with a page). Number 588 in Australia in 2024, of 638.

Compare with…

Suggestions: West Arnhem · 2022 West Arnhem · 2022 West Arnhem · 2026 West Arnhem · 2019

Burnt area: 5,263ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 13days; 14 Jun 2024 – 26 Jun 2024
Municipalities hit: 2; local government areas
Started on: 14 Jun; 2024
Heat detections: 215; in a single hotspot: 75 MW
Danger at start: 39; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 131MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Jun26 Jun

Play back 26 Jun 2024

How it evolved, day by day

14 Jun 15 Jun 16 Jun 18 Jun 20 Jun 22 Jun 24 Jun

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

42km/h · peak gust

20%lowest humidity

It had gone 57 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

93% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,475 ha in 2016, 1,173 ha in 2017, 1,329 ha in 2018, 758 ha in 2019, 3,018 ha in 2020, 945 ha in 2021, 2,508 ha in 2022, 209 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,906 ha that had burned before.

1,756 ha West Arnhem fire, May 2022 9,373 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.3% of the area of London (53 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

3,784 ha reached on 14 Jun

0.1 %
Unincorporated NT

1,481 ha reached on 14 Jun

0.1 %

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 2025

Built-up area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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	Danger (FWI)
14 Jun	33.6 °C	20 %	28 km/h	Very high 39
15 Jun	33.4 °C	27 %	30 km/h	Very high 39
16 Jun	33.7 °C	25 %	34 km/h	Very high 39
17 Jun	33.2 °C	23 %	35 km/h	Very high 41
18 Jun	32.5 °C	23 %	30 km/h	Very high 39
19 Jun	32.4 °C	23 %	30 km/h	Very high 40
20 Jun	32.8 °C	24 %	31 km/h	Very high 41
21 Jun	32.0 °C	30 %	41 km/h	Very high 42
22 Jun	31.1 °C	26 %	42 km/h	Very high 43
23 Jun	31.3 °C	30 %	36 km/h	Very high 39
24 Jun	31.0 °C	28 %	30 km/h	High 37
25 Jun	31.6 °C	32 %	23 km/h	High 32
26 Jun	33.0 °C	42 %	24 km/h	High 29
27 Jun after	34.5 °C	39 %	28 km/h	High 31
28 Jun after	34.2 °C	40 %	30 km/h	High 32
29 Jun after	34.0 °C	41 %	32 km/h	High 33
30 Jun after	33.9 °C	40 %	33 km/h	High 33
1 Jul after	33.7 °C	40 %	37 km/h	High 36
2 Jul after	32.0 °C	34 %	48 km/h	Very high 40
3 Jul after	31.4 °C	26 %	42 km/h	Very high 40
4 Jul after	29.5 °C	23 %	37 km/h	Very high 40
5 Jul after	31.2 °C	26 %	29 km/h	High 35
6 Jul after	32.2 °C	42 %	32 km/h	High 32

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 7 Jun 2024

After · 3 Jul 2024

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 19 June 2024 the air beside the fire reached 28 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 16: 1.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak28 µg/m³

Days over the guideline1 day

PM1040 µg/m³

Optical depth0.35

WHO 15

1213141516171819202122

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 · 215Every 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 14 June 2024 to 26 June 2024 (13 days). The perimeter dates it from 14 June 2024 to 19 June 2024.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,263 hectares (52.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: West Arnhem (3,784 ha, 0.1 %); Unincorporated NT (1,481 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 33.7 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, class Very 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: 19 June 2024 → 26 June 2024.

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?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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 June 2024 to 19 June 2024. 215 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 2025, 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