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West Arnhem fire, 6 July 2025 West Arnhem

Out · last detection 21 Jul 2025, 04:41 UTC

The fire started on 6 July 2025 in West Arnhem, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 18 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,350 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 2154th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3508 with a page). Number 700 in Australia in 2025, of 1124.

The power measured by the satellite is low (19.8 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…

Suggestions: West Arnhem · 2023West Arnhem · 2019West Arnhem · 2020West Arnhem · 2018

Burnt area
7,350ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
18days
6 Jul 2025 – 23 Jul 2025
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
6 Jul
2025
Heat detections
259
in a single hotspot: 20 MW
Danger at start
34
High · FWI index
Average daily power
79MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Jul23 Jul
21 Jul 2025

How it evolved, day by day

6 Jul 2025 · 229 MW · 24 7 Jul 2025 · 74 MW · 16 8 Jul 2025 · 202 MW · 63 9 Jul 2025 · 85 MW · 16 10 Jul 2025 · 243 MW · 58 11 Jul 2025 · 154 MW · 26 12 Jul 2025 · 23 MW · 5 13 Jul 2025 · 7 MW · 4 14 Jul 2025 · 56 MW · 11 15 Jul 2025 · 17 MW · 6 16 Jul 2025 · 10 MW · 2 17 Jul 2025 · 34 MW · 9 19 Jul 2025 · 3 MW · 4 20 Jul 2025 · 22 MW · 11 21 Jul 2025 · 21 MW · 4
6 Jul 9 Jul 10 Jul 12 Jul 15 Jul 19 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

31°high
52km/h · peak gust
22%lowest humidity

It had gone 38 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

100% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,609 ha in 2016, 2,772 ha in 2017, 979 ha in 2018, 3,719 ha in 2019, 1,161 ha in 2020, 1,607 ha in 2021, 1,430 ha in 2022, 5,326 ha in 2023, 39 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 7,329 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4.6% of the area of London (74 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
    7,407 ha reached on 6 Jul
    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 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)
6 Jul 30.6 °C 44 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
7 Jul 29.6 °C 41 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
8 Jul 30.7 °C 40 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
9 Jul 30.5 °C 35 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
10 Jul 30.3 °C 29 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
11 Jul 28.6 °C 27 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
12 Jul 29.5 °C 40 % 49 km/h 1.2 mm High 27
13 Jul 30.0 °C 41 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
14 Jul 29.1 °C 33 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
15 Jul 29.4 °C 30 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
16 Jul 30.0 °C 29 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
17 Jul 29.1 °C 30 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
18 Jul 28.8 °C 32 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
19 Jul 29.2 °C 26 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
20 Jul 28.7 °C 25 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
21 Jul 29.5 °C 22 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
22 Jul 30.1 °C 22 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
23 Jul 31.9 °C 22 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
24 Jul after 31.4 °C 45 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
25 Jul after 30.8 °C 51 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
26 Jul after 31.7 °C 45 % 28 km/h 0.1 mm High 26
27 Jul after 32.3 °C 38 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
28 Jul after 30.9 °C 45 % 28 km/h 0.1 mm High 28
29 Jul after 31.9 °C 42 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
30 Jul after 31.8 °C 40 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
31 Jul after 31.0 °C 47 % 31 km/h 0.7 mm High 23

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 29 Jun 2025
After · 30 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 22 July 2025 the air beside the fire reached 31 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 16: 1.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak31 µg/m³
Days over the guideline3 days
PM1032 µg/m³
Optical depth0.42
456789101112131415161718192021222324
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 · 259Every 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 6 July 2025 to 23 July 2025 (18 days). The perimeter dates it from 6 July 2025 to 21 July 2025.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,350 hectares (73.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered West Arnhem (7,407 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 30.7 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 41, 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 21 July 2025 → 23 July 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
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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 6 July 2025 to 21 July 2025. 259 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.