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Barkly fire, 2 April 2017 Barkly

Out · last detection 9 Apr 2017, 04:55 UTC

The fire started on 2 April 2017 in Barkly, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,239 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 2190th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3493 with a page). Number 530 in Australia in 2017, of 862.

Burnt area
7,239ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
7days
2 Apr 2017 – 8 Apr 2017
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
2 Apr
2017
Heat detections
215
in a single hotspot: 98 MW
Danger at start
74
Very extreme · FWI index
Energy released
1.9GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

9 Apr 2017
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 2 Apr8 Apr

How it evolved, day by day

23456789

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

The weather it burned in

36°high
60km/h · peak gust
10%lowest humidity

It had gone 36 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

What happened to each town

  1. Barkly where it started
    7,341 ha reached on 2 Apr
    0.0 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

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)
2 Apr 30.5 °C 10 % 60 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 74
3 Apr 31.8 °C 12 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 76
4 Apr 33.4 °C 16 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 69
5 Apr 33.6 °C 15 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 72
6 Apr 33.8 °C 15 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 67
7 Apr 35.3 °C 15 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 67
8 Apr 35.6 °C 14 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 75
9 Apr after 35.2 °C 13 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 76
10 Apr after 29.7 °C 15 % 62 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 85
11 Apr after 28.0 °C 11 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 74
12 Apr after 31.5 °C 10 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 69
13 Apr after 32.3 °C 11 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 69
14 Apr after 32.8 °C 10 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 71
15 Apr after 33.6 °C 10 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
16 Apr after 35.5 °C 12 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
17 Apr after 35.7 °C 16 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
18 Apr after 34.6 °C 26 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
19 Apr after 34.7 °C 25 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 26 Mar 2017
After · 15 Apr 2017

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

Detections table · 215Every 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 Barkly fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 2 April 2017 and 8 April 2017: 7 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 7,239 hectares (72.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Barkly (7,341 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.6 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 60 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 76, class Very extreme.
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

Satellite cross-check

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.

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.