How long did the West Arnhem fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 10 October 2026 and 3 November 2026: 25 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 5,978 hectares (59.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered West Arnhem (6,012 ha, 0.1 %).

Is the West Arnhem fire still active?

No fire detections since 3 Nov 2026, 04:59 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.9 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, 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 · 10 Oct 2026 – 3 Nov 2026

West Arnhem fire, 10 October 2026 West Arnhem

Dying down · last detection 3 Nov 2026, 04:59 UTC

The fire started on 10 October 2026 in West Arnhem, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 25 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,978 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 2802th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3521 with a page). Number 710 in Australia in 2026, of 921.

Compare with…

Suggestions: West Arnhem · 2017 West Arnhem · 2021 West Arnhem · 2023 West Arnhem · 2023

Is it still active?

No detections since 3 Nov 2026, 04:59 UTC. That usually means no flame is visible from space any more, although hotspots may remain. Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.

Burnt area: 5,978ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 25days; 10 Oct 2026 – 3 Nov 2026
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 10 Oct; 2026
Heat detections: 134; in a single hotspot: 100 MW
Danger at start: 39; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 59MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 10 Oct3 Nov

Play back 3 Nov 2026

How it evolved, day by day

12 Oct 20 Oct 25 Oct 30 Oct

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

38°high

48km/h · peak gust

25%lowest humidity

It had gone 8 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

85% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,060 ha in 2016, 4,001 ha in 2017, 2,014 ha in 2018, 3,894 ha in 2019, 1,995 ha in 2020, 3,261 ha in 2021, 1,096 ha in 2022, 5,507 ha in 2023, 564 ha in 2024, 3,158 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,101 ha that had burned before.

698 ha West Arnhem fire, July 2017 9,541 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.8% of the area of London (60 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

6,012 ha reached on 10 Oct

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) · forecast models, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives

Day	High	Min. humidity	Peak gust	Rain	Danger (FWI)
10 Oct	36.2 °C	26 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
11 Oct	36.7 °C	25 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
12 Oct	37.5 °C	28 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
13 Oct	36.2 °C	33 %	35 km/h	0.9 mm	High 31
14 Oct	35.7 °C	34 %	39 km/h	0.5 mm	High 33
15 Oct	34.5 °C	38 %	42 km/h	0.4 mm	High 35
16 Oct	35.8 °C	34 %	42 km/h	0.1 mm	High 35
17 Oct	35.7 °C	35 %	39 km/h	0.8 mm	High 33
18 Oct	36.5 °C	30 %	41 km/h	1.0 mm	High 35
19 Oct	36.7 °C	30 %	40 km/h	0.2 mm	Very high 40
20 Oct	36.3 °C	29 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
21 Oct	35.0 °C	37 %	38 km/h	1.9 mm	High 22
22 Oct	35.8 °C	33 %	37 km/h	0.1 mm	High 34
23 Oct	36.2 °C	33 %	38 km/h	0.5 mm	High 33
24 Oct	37.3 °C	35 %	44 km/h	2.2 mm	High 26
25 Oct	37.9 °C	32 %	39 km/h	0.8 mm	High 36
26 Oct	37.3 °C	38 %	48 km/h	3.3 mm	Moderate 15
27 Oct	36.8 °C	44 %	43 km/h	2.2 mm	Moderate 18
28 Oct	37.3 °C	36 %	34 km/h	1.9 mm	High 21
29 Oct	35.0 °C	46 %	27 km/h	3.0 mm	Low 9
30 Oct	35.8 °C	35 %	37 km/h	0.2 mm	High 27
31 Oct	37.1 °C	30 %	37 km/h	1.0 mm	High 28
1 Nov	37.5 °C	29 %	45 km/h	0.2 mm	High 36
2 Nov	36.3 °C	37 %	35 km/h	0.3 mm	High 32
3 Nov	37.9 °C	26 %	33 km/h	0.8 mm	High 33
4 Nov after	38.8 °C	28 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 3 Oct 2026

After · 4 Nov 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 9 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 17 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak17 µg/m³

Days over the guideline0 days

PM1020 µg/m³

Optical depth0.30

WHO 15

8 Oct11 Oct14 Oct17 Oct20 Oct

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 · 134Every 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 10 October 2026 and 3 November 2026: 25 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 5,978 hectares (59.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered West Arnhem (6,012 ha, 0.1 %).
Is the West Arnhem fire still active?: No fire detections since 3 Nov 2026, 04:59 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.9 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, 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 · 5 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

3 November 2026 Area: 5,807 → 5,978 ha.
1 November 2026 Area: 5,678 → 5,807 ha.
31 October 2026 Area: 5,504 → 5,678 ha.
29 October 2026 Area: 5,395 → 5,504 ha.
26 October 2026 Area: 5,286 → 5,395 ha.

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?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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. 134 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
We have not matched this page with any official record.
Weather: ECMWF IFS model, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives.
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.