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Barkly fire, 22 October 2017 Barkly

Out · last detection 30 Oct 2017, 04:32 UTC

The fire started on 22 October 2017 in Barkly, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 50,914 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 172th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3496 with a page). Number 26 in Australia in 2017, of 862.

Burnt area
50,914ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
8days
22 Oct 2017 – 29 Oct 2017
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
22 Oct
2017
Heat detections
1,989
in a single hotspot: 416 MW
Danger at start
91
Very extreme · FWI index
Energy released
37.8GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

30 Oct 2017
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 22 Oct29 Oct

How it evolved, day by day

222324252627282930

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

The weather it burned in

40°high
63km/h · peak gust
5%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 10.4 mm on 11 Nov.

This area had burned before

2% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 797 ha in 2016.

What happened to each town

  1. Barkly where it started
    50,799 ha reached on 22 Oct
    0.2 %

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)
22 Oct 34.7 °C 5 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 91
23 Oct 35.3 °C 6 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 80
24 Oct 36.8 °C 5 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 77
25 Oct 38.8 °C 8 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 69
26 Oct 38.6 °C 15 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 78
27 Oct 39.2 °C 15 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 77
28 Oct 39.3 °C 15 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 78
29 Oct 39.5 °C 16 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 69
30 Oct after 39.1 °C 15 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 91
31 Oct after 36.4 °C 16 % 63 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 96
1 Nov after 34.6 °C 7 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 88
2 Nov after 35.2 °C 7 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 85
3 Nov after 37.0 °C 6 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 82
4 Nov after 38.6 °C 10 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 68
5 Nov after 38.2 °C 16 % 48 km/h 0.2 mm Extreme 70
6 Nov after 39.2 °C 17 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 81
7 Nov after 35.9 °C 26 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
8 Nov after 32.7 °C 12 % 56 km/h 0.2 mm Very extreme 80
9 Nov after 37.6 °C 14 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 81
10 Nov after 35.8 °C 23 % 48 km/h 0.3 mm Extreme 64
11 Nov after 35.3 °C 38 % 44 km/h 10.4 mm Moderate 17

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 15 Oct 2017
After · 5 Nov 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 · 1,989Every 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 22 October 2017 and 29 October 2017: 8 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 50,914 hectares (509.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Barkly (50,799 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.5 °C, humidity dropped to 5 % and gusts hit 63 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 96, 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.