How long did the West Arnhem fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 20 July 2024 to 3 September 2024 (46 days). The perimeter dates it from 27 July 2024 to 31 August 2024.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 19,417 hectares (194.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered West Arnhem (19,280 ha, 0.4 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 30.2 °C, humidity dropped to 33 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 33, 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 · 2024-07-20 → 2024-09-03

West Arnhem fire, 20 July 2024 West Arnhem

Out · last detection 3 Sept 2024, 04:59 UTC

The fire started on 20 July 2024 in West Arnhem, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 46 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 19,417 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

This page is probably a fire complex, not a single fire. GWIS merges into one perimeter the fires that touch over weeks, which in large burning seasons can join dozens of separate fires. The total area is reliable; the origin and dates refer to the whole complex.

Other fire pages in the same area and on the same dates:

9,554 haWest Arnhem17 July 2024 · 34 days

It is the 640th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3519 with a page). Number 94 in Australia in 2024, of 638.

Compare with…

Suggestions: West Arnhem · 2017 West Arnhem · 2018 West Arnhem · 2022 West Arnhem · 2019

Burnt area: 19,417ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 46days; 20 Jul 2024 – 3 Sept 2024
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 20 Jul; 2024
Heat detections: 1,030; in a single hotspot: 166 MW
Danger at start: 23; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 186MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 20 Jul3 Sept

Play back 3 Sept 2024

How it evolved, day by day

22 Jul 1 Aug 7 Aug 9 Aug 13 Aug 19 Aug 25 Aug 31 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

30°high

46km/h · peak gust

33%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

100% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,404 ha in 2016, 17,903 ha in 2017, 14,916 ha in 2018, 10,408 ha in 2019, 6,526 ha in 2020, 5,213 ha in 2021, 11,329 ha in 2022, 749 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 19,320 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 12% of the area of London (194 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

19,280 ha reached on 22 Jul

0.4 %

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	Rain	Danger (FWI)
20 Jul	26.2 °C	46 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
21 Jul	25.7 °C	38 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
22 Jul	25.9 °C	40 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
23 Jul	26.1 °C	56 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
24 Jul	27.2 °C	56 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 21
25 Jul	28.3 °C	64 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
26 Jul	27.8 °C	67 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
27 Jul	27.5 °C	70 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 15
28 Jul	28.6 °C	57 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
29 Jul	28.0 °C	55 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
30 Jul	27.5 °C	61 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
31 Jul	28.6 °C	53 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
1 Aug	28.1 °C	56 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
2 Aug	27.9 °C	53 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
3 Aug	27.7 °C	56 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
4 Aug	27.4 °C	57 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 21
5 Aug	27.7 °C	56 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
6 Aug	28.0 °C	51 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
7 Aug	29.4 °C	46 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
8 Aug	29.4 °C	40 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
9 Aug	28.5 °C	37 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
10 Aug	28.3 °C	47 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
11 Aug	29.8 °C	35 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
12 Aug	29.3 °C	33 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
13 Aug	28.5 °C	41 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
14 Aug	28.0 °C	43 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
15 Aug	27.6 °C	52 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
16 Aug	27.9 °C	53 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
17 Aug	28.1 °C	52 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
18 Aug	28.3 °C	58 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
19 Aug	29.1 °C	47 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
20 Aug	29.5 °C	49 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
21 Aug	29.7 °C	56 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
22 Aug	29.0 °C	58 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
23 Aug	30.0 °C	48 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
24 Aug	30.2 °C	60 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
25 Aug	30.0 °C	54 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
26 Aug	29.4 °C	47 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
27 Aug	28.3 °C	57 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
28 Aug	28.8 °C	56 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
29 Aug	28.7 °C	50 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
30 Aug	28.8 °C	53 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
31 Aug	28.0 °C	67 %	25 km/h	0.3 mm	Moderate 19
1 Sept	28.8 °C	61 %	31 km/h	0.1 mm	Moderate 20
2 Sept	29.9 °C	48 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
3 Sept	30.0 °C	49 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
4 Sept after	29.6 °C	49 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
5 Sept after	28.7 °C	60 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
6 Sept after	29.1 °C	62 %	46 km/h	0.1 mm	High 28
7 Sept after	29.4 °C	61 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
8 Sept after	29.0 °C	52 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
9 Sept after	30.1 °C	43 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
10 Sept after	30.2 °C	47 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
11 Sept after	29.9 °C	46 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
12 Sept after	30.1 °C	45 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
13 Sept after	30.4 °C	45 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 13 Jul 2024

After · 10 Sept 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 13 August 2024 the air beside the fire reached 18 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak18 µg/m³

Days over the guideline0 days

PM1026 µg/m³

Optical depth0.35

WHO 15

2526272829303112345678910111213141516171819202122232425262728293031123

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 · 1,030Every 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 20 July 2024 to 3 September 2024 (46 days). The perimeter dates it from 27 July 2024 to 31 August 2024.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 19,417 hectares (194.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered West Arnhem (19,280 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 30.2 °C, humidity dropped to 33 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 33, 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

26 October 2026 Last day with fire: 31 August 2024 → 3 September 2024.
26 October 2026 Start date: 27 July 2024 → 20 July 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 27 July 2024 to 31 August 2024. 1,030 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