How long did the West Arnhem fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 4 July 2026 to 19 July 2026 (16 days). The perimeter dates it from 4 July 2026 to 14 July 2026.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,937 hectares (59.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered West Arnhem (5,978 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 30.6 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 39, 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 · 2026-07-04 → 2026-07-19

West Arnhem fire, 4 July 2026 West Arnhem

Out · last detection 19 Jul 2026, 15:52 UTC

The fire started on 4 July 2026 in West Arnhem, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,937 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 2833th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3518 with a page). Number 713 in Australia in 2026, of 908.

Compare with…

Suggestions: West Arnhem · 2026 West Arnhem · 2019 West Arnhem · 2023 West Arnhem · 2020

Burnt area: 5,937ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 16days; 4 Jul 2026 – 19 Jul 2026
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 4 Jul; 2026
Heat detections: 111; in a single hotspot: 89 MW
Danger at start: 29; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 68MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Jul19 Jul

Play back 19 Jul 2026

How it evolved, day by day

4 Jul 6 Jul 8 Jul 10 Jul 18 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

51km/h · peak gust

26%lowest humidity

It had gone 54 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

95% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 355 ha in 2016, 1,359 ha in 2017, 1,165 ha in 2018, 1,813 ha in 2019, 423 ha in 2020, 2,569 ha in 2021, 246 ha in 2022, 1,957 ha in 2023, 1,527 ha in 2024, 322 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,633 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.7% of the area of London (59 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

5,978 ha reached on 4 Jul

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	Rain	Danger (FWI)
4 Jul	29.9 °C	40 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
5 Jul	30.2 °C	37 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
6 Jul	29.2 °C	41 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
7 Jul	29.5 °C	40 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
8 Jul	29.7 °C	44 %	42 km/h	0.2 mm	High 30
9 Jul	30.6 °C	37 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
10 Jul	30.4 °C	34 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
11 Jul	30.1 °C	26 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
12 Jul	29.8 °C	32 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
13 Jul	29.8 °C	41 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
14 Jul	29.4 °C	38 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
15 Jul	28.7 °C	40 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
16 Jul	29.4 °C	35 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
17 Jul	28.0 °C	32 %	51 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
18 Jul	27.7 °C	29 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
19 Jul	27.7 °C	30 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
20 Jul after	28.0 °C	31 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
21 Jul after	28.3 °C	34 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
22 Jul after	28.4 °C	30 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
23 Jul after	29.6 °C	32 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
24 Jul after	27.9 °C	45 %	54 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
25 Jul after	27.9 °C	26 %	54 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
26 Jul after	27.8 °C	40 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
27 Jul after	28.3 °C	28 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
28 Jul after	29.2 °C	20 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
29 Jul after	28.6 °C	32 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 27 Jun 2026

After · 26 Jul 2026

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 20 July 2026 the air beside the fire reached 62 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 28: 1.9 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak62 µg/m³

Days over the guideline5 days

PM1064 µg/m³

Optical depth0.74

WHO 15

252627282930123456789101112131415161718192021222324

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 · 111Every 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 4 July 2026 to 19 July 2026 (16 days). The perimeter dates it from 4 July 2026 to 14 July 2026.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,937 hectares (59.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered West Arnhem (5,978 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 30.6 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 39, 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: 14 July 2026 → 19 July 2026.

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 4 July 2026 to 14 July 2026. 111 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