How long did the West Daly fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 5 June 2026 to 21 June 2026 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 5 June 2026 to 14 June 2026.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,474 hectares (64.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered West Daly (6,519 ha, 0.5 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 30.1 °C, humidity dropped to 29 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 37, 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 · 2026-06-05 → 2026-06-21

West Daly fire, 5 June 2026 West Daly

Out · last detection 21 Jun 2026, 05:08 UTC

The fire started on 5 June 2026 in West Daly, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,474 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 2525th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3519 with a page). Number 621 in Australia in 2026, of 911.

Compare with…

Suggestions: West Daly · 2022 West Daly · 2025 West Daly · 2024 West Daly · 2022

Burnt area: 6,474ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 17days; 5 Jun 2026 – 21 Jun 2026
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 5 Jun; 2026
Heat detections: 162; in a single hotspot: 245 MW
Danger at start: 30; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 185MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Jun21 Jun

Play back 21 Jun 2026

How it evolved, day by day

5 Jun 7 Jun 10 Jun 12 Jun 14 Jun 16 Jun 21 Jun

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

29%lowest humidity

It had gone 47 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: 3,083 ha in 2016, 3,899 ha in 2017, 3,181 ha in 2018, 5,133 ha in 2019, 2,848 ha in 2020, 3,634 ha in 2021, 6,008 ha in 2022, 2,797 ha in 2023, 2,934 ha in 2024, 2,563 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,512 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 4.1% of the area of London (65 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 Daly where it started

6,519 ha reached on 5 Jun

0.5 %

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	Danger (FWI)
5 Jun	30.0 °C	39 %	29 km/h	High 30
6 Jun	28.9 °C	35 %	36 km/h	High 33
7 Jun	26.8 °C	29 %	34 km/h	High 33
8 Jun	27.1 °C	40 %	28 km/h	High 32
9 Jun	28.6 °C	50 %	27 km/h	High 26
10 Jun	29.8 °C	46 %	28 km/h	High 26
11 Jun	30.1 °C	44 %	31 km/h	High 29
12 Jun	30.0 °C	45 %	28 km/h	High 28
13 Jun	30.0 °C	48 %	27 km/h	High 28
14 Jun	29.9 °C	40 %	29 km/h	High 28
15 Jun	29.5 °C	48 %	32 km/h	High 30
16 Jun	29.6 °C	44 %	28 km/h	High 28
17 Jun	28.7 °C	56 %	23 km/h	High 23
18 Jun	28.5 °C	56 %	28 km/h	High 27
19 Jun	26.9 °C	38 %	45 km/h	High 37
20 Jun	28.1 °C	40 %	42 km/h	High 35
21 Jun	27.3 °C	37 %	42 km/h	High 36
22 Jun after	28.1 °C	38 %	39 km/h	High 34
23 Jun after	28.3 °C	40 %	34 km/h	High 32
24 Jun after	28.6 °C	41 %	33 km/h	High 30
25 Jun after	28.4 °C	46 %	34 km/h	High 34
26 Jun after	28.3 °C	39 %	37 km/h	High 33
27 Jun after	28.5 °C	41 %	32 km/h	High 33
28 Jun after	28.3 °C	41 %	26 km/h	High 28
29 Jun after	28.6 °C	43 %	19 km/h	High 26
30 Jun after	28.3 °C	48 %	25 km/h	High 26
1 Jul after	28.0 °C	54 %	19 km/h	High 22

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 29 May 2026

After · 28 Jun 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 6 June 2026 the air beside the fire reached 32 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 18: 1.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak32 µg/m³

Days over the guideline3 days

PM1034 µg/m³

Optical depth0.45

WHO 15

3456789101112131415161718192021222324

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 · 162Every 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 Daly fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 5 June 2026 to 21 June 2026 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 5 June 2026 to 14 June 2026.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,474 hectares (64.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered West Daly (6,519 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 30.1 °C, humidity dropped to 29 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 37, 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 · 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 June 2026 → 21 June 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 5 June 2026 to 14 June 2026. 162 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