How long did the West Arnhem fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 27 August 2026 and 2 October 2026: 37 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 10,823 hectares (108.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered West Arnhem (9,937 ha, 0.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 30.8 °C, humidity dropped to 40 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 35, 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 · 2026-08-27 → 2026-10-02

West Arnhem fire, 27 August 2026 West Arnhem

Out · last detection 2 Oct 2026, 04:59 UTC

The fire started on 27 August 2026 in West Arnhem, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 37 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,823 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1332th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3519 with a page). Number 319 in Australia in 2026, of 911.

Compare with…

Suggestions: West Arnhem · 2024 West Arnhem · 2022 West Arnhem · 2017 West Arnhem · 2018

Burnt area: 10,823ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 37days; 27 Aug 2026 – 2 Oct 2026
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 27 Aug; 2026
Heat detections: 694; in a single hotspot: 64 MW
Danger at start: 19; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 131MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 27 Aug2 Oct

Play back 2 Oct 2026

How it evolved, day by day

27 Aug 1 Sept 6 Sept 11 Sept 16 Sept 21 Sept 26 Sept

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

53km/h · peak gust

40%lowest humidity

It had gone 24 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

94% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,991 ha in 2016, 9,305 ha in 2017, 7,630 ha in 2018, 2,351 ha in 2019, 5,291 ha in 2020, 2,315 ha in 2021, 8,187 ha in 2022, 9,536 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 10,200 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 6.8% of the area of London (108 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

9,937 ha reached on 27 Aug

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)
16 Aug	28.6 °C	54 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
17 Aug	28.1 °C	59 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 21
18 Aug	27.5 °C	62 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
19 Aug	27.6 °C	61 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
20 Aug	27.9 °C	52 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
21 Aug	27.8 °C	61 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
22 Aug	28.4 °C	56 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
23 Aug	28.1 °C	57 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
24 Aug	28.4 °C	59 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
25 Aug	28.4 °C	59 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
26 Aug	27.7 °C	60 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
27 Aug	30.0 °C	43 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
28 Aug	29.0 °C	54 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
29 Aug	29.4 °C	55 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
30 Aug	29.6 °C	48 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
31 Aug	28.9 °C	43 %	42 km/h	0.2 mm	High 29
1 Sept	30.2 °C	40 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
2 Sept	28.2 °C	61 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
3 Sept	28.7 °C	59 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
4 Sept	29.0 °C	59 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
5 Sept	29.7 °C	63 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
6 Sept	30.0 °C	58 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
7 Sept	30.0 °C	55 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
8 Sept	30.8 °C	49 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
9 Sept	29.6 °C	57 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
10 Sept	29.5 °C	62 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
11 Sept	29.2 °C	61 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
12 Sept	28.3 °C	60 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
13 Sept	28.5 °C	59 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
14 Sept	28.5 °C	59 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
15 Sept	28.8 °C	59 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
16 Sept	28.8 °C	48 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
17 Sept	28.8 °C	43 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
18 Sept	29.0 °C	52 %	53 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
19 Sept	28.2 °C	60 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
20 Sept	29.0 °C	55 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
21 Sept	29.2 °C	55 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
22 Sept	29.4 °C	55 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
23 Sept	29.2 °C	60 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
24 Sept	29.3 °C	60 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
25 Sept	29.2 °C	60 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
26 Sept	29.1 °C	62 %	35 km/h	0.5 mm	High 24
27 Sept	29.4 °C	60 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
28 Sept	29.3 °C	61 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
29 Sept	29.5 °C	61 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
30 Sept	29.9 °C	60 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
1 Oct	29.8 °C	64 %	38 km/h	0.4 mm	High 25
2 Oct	29.9 °C	57 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
3 Oct after	29.5 °C	60 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
4 Oct after	29.4 °C	58 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
5 Oct after	30.6 °C	52 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 20 Aug 2026

After · 9 Oct 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 1 September 2026 the air beside the fire reached 27 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak27 µg/m³

Days over the guideline0 days

PM1031 µg/m³

Optical depth0.40

WHO 15

252627282930311234567891011121314151617181920212223242526272829301234

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 · 694Every 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?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 27 August 2026 and 2 October 2026: 37 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 10,823 hectares (108.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered West Arnhem (9,937 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 30.8 °C, humidity dropped to 40 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 35, 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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 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.

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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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 694 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