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Barkly fire, 7 May 2018 Barkly

Out · last detection 29 May 2018, 16:25 UTC

The fire started on 7 May 2018 in Barkly, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 22 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,535 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1551th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3496 with a page). Number 414 in Australia in 2018, of 923.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Barkly · 2026Barkly · 2017

Burnt area
9,535ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
22days
7 May 2018 – 28 May 2018
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
7 May
2018
Heat detections
482
in a single hotspot: 37 MW
Danger at start
55
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
74MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 7 May28 May
29 May 2018

How it evolved, day by day

7 May 2018 · 227 MW · 50 8 May 2018 · 186 MW · 29 9 May 2018 · 52 MW · 23 10 May 2018 · 88 MW · 30 11 May 2018 · 128 MW · 43 12 May 2018 · 65 MW · 22 13 May 2018 · 41 MW · 25 14 May 2018 · 121 MW · 39 15 May 2018 · 51 MW · 19 16 May 2018 · 94 MW · 31 17 May 2018 · 74 MW · 24 18 May 2018 · 69 MW · 14 19 May 2018 · 15 MW · 7 20 May 2018 · 72 MW · 20 21 May 2018 · 123 MW · 40 22 May 2018 · 101 MW · 29 23 May 2018 · 3 MW · 1 24 May 2018 · 38 MW · 13 25 May 2018 · 40 MW · 6 26 May 2018 · 75 MW · 3 27 May 2018 · 10 MW · 5 28 May 2018 · 23 MW · 7 29 May 2018 · 1 MW · 2
7 May 11 May 15 May 19 May 23 May 27 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

34°high
60km/h · peak gust
11%lowest humidity

It had gone 33 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

0% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 15 ha in 2017.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 6% of the area of London (95 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

  1. Barkly where it started
    9,497 ha reached on 7 May
    0.0 %

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 2020
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, 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.

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 Rain Danger (FWI)
1 May 33.1 °C 19 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
2 May 33.1 °C 22 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
3 May 34.4 °C 17 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
4 May 34.2 °C 18 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
5 May 33.4 °C 20 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
6 May 33.4 °C 18 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
7 May 33.3 °C 20 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
8 May 33.4 °C 18 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
9 May 33.4 °C 16 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
10 May 33.6 °C 12 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
11 May 28.7 °C 14 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 73
12 May 26.1 °C 11 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 74
13 May 26.6 °C 11 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 72
14 May 27.7 °C 11 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 75
15 May 28.0 °C 12 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 74
16 May 28.3 °C 14 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 76
17 May 29.1 °C 18 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 74
18 May 28.3 °C 17 % 60 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 78
19 May 29.7 °C 21 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
20 May 30.8 °C 24 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
21 May 29.4 °C 22 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 69
22 May 29.1 °C 17 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
23 May 28.4 °C 15 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
24 May 29.0 °C 19 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
25 May 30.8 °C 16 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
26 May 31.5 °C 26 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
27 May 31.1 °C 27 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
28 May 30.8 °C 23 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
29 May after 30.7 °C 23 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
30 May after 30.4 °C 17 % 59 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 70
31 May after 28.6 °C 18 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
1 Jun after 28.2 °C 14 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
2 Jun after 28.0 °C 9 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
3 Jun after 27.3 °C 8 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
4 Jun after 25.7 °C 10 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
5 Jun after 26.3 °C 12 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
6 Jun after 27.8 °C 15 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
7 Jun after 29.4 °C 18 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
8 Jun after 30.0 °C 19 % 34 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 · 30 Apr 2018
After · 4 Jun 2018

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 · 482Every 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 7 May 2018 and 28 May 2018: 22 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 9,535 hectares (95.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Barkly (9,497 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.4 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 60 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 78, 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

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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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. 482 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 2020, 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.