How long did the Barkly fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 20 April 2018 and 3 May 2018: 14 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 10,064 hectares (100.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Barkly (7,108 ha, 0.0 %); Mount Isa (2,936 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 35.5 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 55 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.

AU · Australia · 2018-04-20 → 2018-05-03

Barkly fire, 20 April 2018 Barkly, Mount Isa

Out · last detection 4 May 2018, 15:54 UTC

The fire started on 20 April 2018 in Barkly, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,064 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 1451th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3496 with a page). Number 381 in Australia in 2018, of 923.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mount Isa · 2024 Barkly · 2023 Barkly · 2023 Burke · 2026

Burnt area: 10,064ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 14days; 20 Apr 2018 – 3 May 2018
Municipalities hit: 2; local government areas
Started on: 20 Apr; 2018
Heat detections: 457; in a single hotspot: 190 MW
Danger at start: 54; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 450MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 20 Apr3 May

Play back 4 May 2018

How it evolved, day by day

20 Apr 23 Apr 26 Apr 29 Apr 2 May

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

55km/h · peak gust

8%lowest humidity

It had gone 22 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

1% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 109 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 6.4% of the area of London (101 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

Barkly where it started

7,108 ha reached on 20 Apr

0.0 %
Mount Isa

2,936 ha reached on 20 Apr

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.

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)
20 Apr	35.2 °C	18 %	39 km/h	Extreme 54
21 Apr	35.5 °C	20 %	40 km/h	Extreme 55
22 Apr	35.2 °C	18 %	37 km/h	Extreme 56
23 Apr	34.3 °C	17 %	36 km/h	Extreme 53
24 Apr	33.3 °C	13 %	42 km/h	Extreme 58
25 Apr	33.5 °C	9 %	36 km/h	Extreme 58
26 Apr	33.8 °C	8 %	36 km/h	Extreme 58
27 Apr	33.8 °C	10 %	46 km/h	Extreme 70
28 Apr	32.2 °C	12 %	47 km/h	Very extreme 70
29 Apr	32.3 °C	12 %	41 km/h	Extreme 63
30 Apr	32.7 °C	18 %	41 km/h	Extreme 62
1 May	32.3 °C	18 %	32 km/h	Extreme 53
2 May	32.6 °C	20 %	31 km/h	Very high 49
3 May	33.5 °C	19 %	30 km/h	Extreme 51
4 May after	33.3 °C	18 %	55 km/h	Very extreme 76
5 May after	32.7 °C	20 %	50 km/h	Extreme 67
6 May after	32.8 °C	18 %	48 km/h	Extreme 63
7 May after	32.4 °C	20 %	42 km/h	Extreme 60
8 May after	32.7 °C	18 %	46 km/h	Extreme 64
9 May after	32.7 °C	16 %	44 km/h	Extreme 60
10 May after	32.7 °C	11 %	45 km/h	Extreme 64
11 May after	27.4 °C	14 %	56 km/h	Very extreme 77
12 May after	25.1 °C	10 %	57 km/h	Very extreme 77
13 May after	25.5 °C	12 %	54 km/h	Very extreme 73
14 May after	27.0 °C	11 %	54 km/h	Very extreme 76

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 13 Apr 2018

After · 10 May 2018

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.

Detections table · 457Every 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 Barkly fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 20 April 2018 and 3 May 2018: 14 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 10,064 hectares (100.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Barkly (7,108 ha, 0.0 %); Mount Isa (2,936 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 35.5 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 55 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 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.

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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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 457 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.

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