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Barkly fire, 11 January 2019 Barkly

Out · last detection 16 Jan 2019, 15:36 UTC

The fire started on 11 January 2019 in Barkly, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 13,578 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1011th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3496 with a page). Number 273 in Australia in 2019, of 802.

Burnt area
13,578ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
5days
11 Jan 2019 – 15 Jan 2019
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
11 Jan
2019
Heat detections
510
in a single hotspot: 251 MW
Danger at start
75
Very extreme · FWI index
Energy released
11.2GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

16 Jan 2019
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 11 Jan15 Jan

How it evolved, day by day

111213141516

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

The weather it burned in

41°high
54km/h · peak gust
13%lowest humidity

It had gone 28 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
    13,752 ha reached on 11 Jan
    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)
11 Jan 40.9 °C 16 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 75
12 Jan 39.8 °C 19 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 80
13 Jan 39.1 °C 20 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
14 Jan 40.1 °C 13 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
15 Jan 39.6 °C 18 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
16 Jan after 37.3 °C 25 % 37 km/h 0.2 mm Extreme 53
17 Jan after 38.9 °C 17 % 38 km/h 0.5 mm Extreme 61
18 Jan after 39.1 °C 18 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
19 Jan after 41.8 °C 12 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
20 Jan after 41.5 °C 12 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 77
21 Jan after 39.0 °C 23 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
22 Jan after 39.2 °C 20 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
23 Jan after 40.1 °C 17 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
24 Jan after 40.4 °C 17 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
25 Jan after 39.6 °C 19 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 70
26 Jan after 39.4 °C 15 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
27 Jan after 41.0 °C 10 % 64 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 100

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 4 Jan 2019
After · 22 Jan 2019

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 · 510Every 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 11 January 2019 and 15 January 2019: 5 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 13,578 hectares (135.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Barkly (13,752 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 40.9 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 80, 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.