West Arnhem fire, 23 August 2026 West Arnhem
The fire started on 23 August 2026 in West Arnhem, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 23 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,625 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 1537th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3521 with a page). Number 375 in Australia in 2026, of 921.
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- Burnt area
- 9,625ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 23days
- 23 Aug 2026 – 14 Sept 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- local government areas
- Started on
- 23 Aug
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 326
- in a single hotspot: 91 MW
- Danger at start
- 36
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 137MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 45 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: 399 ha in 2016, 1,224 ha in 2017, 6,411 ha in 2018, 9,091 ha in 2019, 1,669 ha in 2020, 8,688 ha in 2021, 99 ha in 2022, 1,095 ha in 2023, 5,011 ha in 2024, 2,329 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 9,680 ha that had burned before.
- 4,550 ha West Arnhem fire, October 2019 33,593 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,046 ha West Arnhem fire, August 2018 6,009 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,852 ha West Arnhem fire, August 2024 5,626 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,540 ha West Arnhem fire, July 2025 14,835 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 620 ha West Arnhem fire, September 2019 6,316 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 427 ha West Arnhem fire, August 2020 10,806 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 279 ha West Arnhem fire, August 2020 7,035 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 7 ha West Arnhem fire, July 2022 6,219 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
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 started9,667 ha reached on 23 Aug0.2 %
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 2025Inside 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 23 Aug | 31.1 °C | 38 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 24 Aug | 31.6 °C | 36 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 25 Aug | 31.3 °C | 42 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 26 Aug | 32.2 °C | 39 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 27 Aug | 34.2 °C | 29 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 28 Aug | 33.7 °C | 31 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 29 Aug | 33.5 °C | 34 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 30 Aug | 34.1 °C | 24 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 31 Aug | 32.9 °C | 23 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 1 Sept | 33.5 °C | 25 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 2 Sept | 31.2 °C | 41 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 3 Sept | 31.5 °C | 46 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 4 Sept | 32.2 °C | 47 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 5 Sept | 33.8 °C | 40 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 6 Sept | 32.8 °C | 38 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 7 Sept | 33.0 °C | 44 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 8 Sept | 34.2 °C | 34 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 9 Sept | 33.0 °C | 38 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 10 Sept | 31.8 °C | 49 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 11 Sept | 31.4 °C | 45 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 12 Sept | 32.3 °C | 37 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 13 Sept | 33.0 °C | 36 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 14 Sept | 33.4 °C | 34 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 15 Sept after | 33.0 °C | 34 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 16 Sept after | 32.9 °C | 33 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 17 Sept after | 32.5 °C | 29 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 18 Sept after | 32.0 °C | 29 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 19 Sept after | 31.5 °C | 38 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 20 Sept after | 31.0 °C | 46 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 21 Sept after | 32.8 °C | 39 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 22 Sept after | 32.1 °C | 44 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 23 Sept after | 31.8 °C | 49 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 24 Sept after | 32.5 °C | 41 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 25 Sept after | 32.7 °C | 37 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 26 Sept after | 31.9 °C | 41 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 27 Sept after | 32.0 °C | 46 % | 39 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 35 |
| 28 Sept after | 32.1 °C | 46 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 29 Sept after | 32.5 °C | 44 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 30 Sept after | 31.2 °C | 50 % | 34 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 30 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · CopernicusOn 11 September 2026 the air beside the fire reached 16 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).
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 · 326Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the West Arnhem fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 23 August 2026 and 14 September 2026: 23 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 9,625 hectares (96.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered West Arnhem (9,667 ha, 0.2 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 34.2 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, 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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
No changes since 24 October 2026.
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
How we know this
- Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 326 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.
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.