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AU · Australia · –

West Arnhem fire, 3 September 2026 West Arnhem

Out · last detection 28 Sept 2026, 04:14 UTC

The fire started on 3 September 2026 in West Arnhem, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 26 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,087 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 3430th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3521 with a page). Number 891 in Australia in 2026, of 921.

Compare with…

Suggestions: West Arnhem · 2023West Arnhem · 2025West Arnhem · 2025East Arnhem · 2016

Burnt area
5,087ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
26days
3 Sept 2026 – 28 Sept 2026
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
3 Sept
2026
Heat detections
201
in a single hotspot: 47 MW
Danger at start
26
High · FWI index
Average daily power
81MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 3 Sept28 Sept
28 Sept 2026

How it evolved, day by day

3 Sept 2026 · 17 MW · 3 4 Sept 2026 · 265 MW · 13 5 Sept 2026 · 284 MW · 18 6 Sept 2026 · 141 MW · 7 7 Sept 2026 · 21 MW · 4 8 Sept 2026 · 18 MW · 3 9 Sept 2026 · 32 MW · 6 10 Sept 2026 · 67 MW · 9 11 Sept 2026 · 62 MW · 6 13 Sept 2026 · 75 MW · 11 14 Sept 2026 · 28 MW · 5 15 Sept 2026 · 258 MW · 20 16 Sept 2026 · 33 MW · 5 17 Sept 2026 · 125 MW · 16 18 Sept 2026 · 113 MW · 20 19 Sept 2026 · 1 MW · 1 20 Sept 2026 · 46 MW · 4 21 Sept 2026 · 125 MW · 24 22 Sept 2026 · 113 MW · 9 23 Sept 2026 · 30 MW · 5 25 Sept 2026 · 21 MW · 2 26 Sept 2026 · 20 MW · 4 27 Sept 2026 · 32 MW · 5 28 Sept 2026 · 13 MW · 1
5 Sept 14 Sept 19 Sept 25 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

30°high
45km/h · peak gust
44%lowest humidity

It had gone 56 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

99% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,089 ha in 2016, 1,727 ha in 2017, 2,216 ha in 2018, 3,400 ha in 2019, 1,051 ha in 2020, 3,765 ha in 2021, 694 ha in 2022, 4,117 ha in 2023, 1,446 ha in 2024, 2,133 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,027 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.2% of the area of London (51 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
    5,115 ha reached on 3 Sept
    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)
3 Sept 29.1 °C 55 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
4 Sept 29.5 °C 57 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
5 Sept 28.9 °C 62 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
6 Sept 28.7 °C 57 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
7 Sept 29.0 °C 59 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
8 Sept 30.2 °C 55 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
9 Sept 29.3 °C 57 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
10 Sept 29.3 °C 60 % 45 km/h 0.2 mm High 27
11 Sept 28.1 °C 65 % 41 km/h 0.3 mm High 26
12 Sept 29.1 °C 52 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
13 Sept 29.1 °C 55 % 44 km/h 0.3 mm High 29
14 Sept 29.5 °C 51 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
15 Sept 29.6 °C 55 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
16 Sept 30.1 °C 49 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
17 Sept 29.9 °C 47 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
18 Sept 29.6 °C 44 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
19 Sept 29.2 °C 51 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
20 Sept 28.3 °C 57 % 36 km/h 0.3 mm High 28
21 Sept 28.1 °C 58 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
22 Sept 28.8 °C 56 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
23 Sept 28.8 °C 60 % 34 km/h 0.1 mm High 26
24 Sept 29.5 °C 55 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
25 Sept 29.9 °C 55 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
26 Sept 29.2 °C 58 % 36 km/h 0.4 mm High 27
27 Sept 29.7 °C 58 % 39 km/h 0.2 mm High 29
28 Sept 29.8 °C 59 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
29 Sept after 30.0 °C 56 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
30 Sept after 29.1 °C 62 % 34 km/h 0.3 mm High 25
1 Oct after 29.4 °C 62 % 38 km/h 0.5 mm High 27
2 Oct after 29.3 °C 60 % 38 km/h 0.2 mm High 26
3 Oct after 29.5 °C 55 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
4 Oct after 29.6 °C 54 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
5 Oct after 29.4 °C 59 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 27

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 27 Aug 2026
After · 5 Oct 2026

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 September 2026 the air beside the fire reached 22 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak22 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1027 µg/m³
Optical depth0.37
1 Sept8 Sept15 Sept22 Sept29 Sept
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 · 201Every 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 3 September 2026 to 28 September 2026 (26 days). The perimeter dates it from 3 September 2026 to 25 September 2026.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,087 hectares (50.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered West Arnhem (5,115 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 30.2 °C, humidity dropped to 44 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 34, 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

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.

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 3 September 2026 to 25 September 2026. 201 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.