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West Arnhem fire, 13 June 2025 West Arnhem

Out · last detection 9 Jul 2025, 05:06 UTC

The fire started on 13 June 2025 in West Arnhem, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 27 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 13,937 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 998th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3521 with a page). Number 330 in Australia in 2025, of 1124.

Compare with…

Suggestions: West Arnhem · 2020West Arnhem · 2019West Arnhem · 2018West Arnhem · 2020

Burnt area
13,937ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
27days
13 Jun 2025 – 9 Jul 2025
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
13 Jun
2025
Heat detections
566
in a single hotspot: 46 MW
Danger at start
36
High · FWI index
Average daily power
120MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 13 Jun9 Jul
9 Jul 2025

How it evolved, day by day

13 Jun 2025 · 4 MW · 1 17 Jun 2025 · 68 MW · 29 18 Jun 2025 · 37 MW · 10 19 Jun 2025 · 13 MW · 4 20 Jun 2025 · 9 MW · 2 21 Jun 2025 · 4 MW · 3 22 Jun 2025 · 1 MW · 1 24 Jun 2025 · 54 MW · 14 25 Jun 2025 · 124 MW · 18 26 Jun 2025 · 587 MW · 106 27 Jun 2025 · 208 MW · 72 28 Jun 2025 · 188 MW · 72 29 Jun 2025 · 443 MW · 94 30 Jun 2025 · 405 MW · 73 1 Jul 2025 · 167 MW · 39 3 Jul 2025 · 28 MW · 11 4 Jul 2025 · 36 MW · 8 5 Jul 2025 · 18 MW · 4 8 Jul 2025 · 7 MW · 4 9 Jul 2025 · 6 MW · 1
13 Jun 19 Jun 22 Jun 26 Jun 29 Jun 3 Jul 8 Jul

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

The weather it burned in

32°high
54km/h · peak gust
19%lowest humidity

It had gone 15 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

85% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 13 ha in 2016, 1,061 ha in 2017, 1,867 ha in 2018, 3,017 ha in 2019, 7,901 ha in 2020, 571 ha in 2021, 2,138 ha in 2022, 1,457 ha in 2023, 1,765 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 11,882 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 8.8% of the area of London (139 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

  1. West Arnhem where it started
    14,075 ha reached on 13 Jun
    0.3 %

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)
13 Jun 28.4 °C 20 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
14 Jun 29.1 °C 19 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
15 Jun 28.2 °C 22 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
16 Jun 29.8 °C 39 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
17 Jun 30.0 °C 27 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
18 Jun 29.5 °C 44 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
19 Jun 29.9 °C 36 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
20 Jun 30.1 °C 40 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
21 Jun 30.9 °C 38 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
22 Jun 29.7 °C 31 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
23 Jun 29.7 °C 42 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
24 Jun 31.8 °C 40 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
25 Jun 31.1 °C 35 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
26 Jun 29.6 °C 24 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
27 Jun 29.4 °C 27 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
28 Jun 28.6 °C 23 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
29 Jun 27.6 °C 28 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
30 Jun 27.8 °C 35 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
1 Jul 28.7 °C 24 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
2 Jul 28.4 °C 27 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
3 Jul 29.1 °C 20 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
4 Jul 30.3 °C 23 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
5 Jul 30.4 °C 33 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
6 Jul 31.7 °C 36 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
7 Jul 30.9 °C 33 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
8 Jul 32.0 °C 30 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
9 Jul 31.6 °C 28 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
10 Jul after 31.4 °C 22 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
11 Jul after 29.7 °C 22 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
12 Jul after 30.7 °C 33 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
13 Jul after 31.5 °C 37 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
14 Jul after 31.1 °C 26 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
15 Jul after 31.7 °C 22 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
16 Jul after 32.1 °C 23 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
17 Jul after 30.7 °C 26 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
18 Jul after 29.9 °C 27 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
19 Jul after 30.2 °C 23 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 6 Jun 2025
After · 16 Jul 2025

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 5 July 2025 the air beside the fire reached 37 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak37 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1037 µg/m³
Optical depth0.38
1819202122232425262728293012345678
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 · 566Every 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 timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

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 13 June 2025 to 9 July 2025 (27 days). The perimeter dates it from 20 June 2025 to 5 July 2025.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 13,937 hectares (139.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered West Arnhem (14,075 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 32.0 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, 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

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 5 July 2025 → 9 July 2025.
  2. Start date: 20 June 2025 → 13 June 2025.

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?

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 20 June 2025 to 5 July 2025. 566 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.