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Barkly fire, 2 December 2017 Barkly

Out · last detection 12 Dec 2017, 04:25 UTC

The fire started on 2 December 2017 in Barkly, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,532 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1369th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3496 with a page). Number 303 in Australia in 2017, of 862.

Burnt area
10,532ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
11days
2 Dec 2017 – 12 Dec 2017
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
2 Dec
2017
Heat detections
316
in a single hotspot: 103 MW
Danger at start
19
Moderate · FWI index
Energy released
2.2GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

12 Dec 2017
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 2 Dec12 Dec

How it evolved, day by day

23456789101112

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
60km/h · peak gust
3%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.3 mm on 15 Dec.

This area had burned before

3% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 269 ha in 2016.

What happened to each town

  1. Barkly where it started
    10,569 ha reached on 2 Dec
    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 Dec 34.3 °C 34 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
3 Dec 33.0 °C 19 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
4 Dec 32.1 °C 11 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
5 Dec 32.6 °C 10 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
6 Dec 36.2 °C 8 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
7 Dec 38.0 °C 8 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
8 Dec 38.9 °C 10 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
9 Dec 38.9 °C 12 % 60 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
10 Dec 39.2 °C 8 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
11 Dec 40.1 °C 3 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
12 Dec 40.5 °C 8 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
13 Dec after 39.1 °C 20 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
14 Dec after 38.3 °C 24 % 43 km/h 0.9 mm Very high 43
15 Dec after 36.9 °C 25 % 23 km/h 1.3 mm High 26

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 25 Nov 2017
After · 19 Dec 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 · 316Every 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 December 2017 and 12 December 2017: 11 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 10,532 hectares (105.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Barkly (10,569 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 40.5 °C, humidity dropped to 3 % and gusts hit 60 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 63, class 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.