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Barkly fire, 12 March 2019 Barkly

Out · last detection 22 Mar 2019, 16:58 UTC

The fire started on 12 March 2019 in Barkly, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 17,503 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 735th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3493 with a page). Number 188 in Australia in 2019, of 802.

Burnt area
17,503ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
11days
12 Mar 2019 – 22 Mar 2019
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
12 Mar
2019
Heat detections
593
in a single hotspot: 95 MW
Danger at start
73
Very extreme · FWI index
Energy released
6.1GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

22 Mar 2019
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 12 Mar22 Mar

How it evolved, day by day

1213141516171819202122

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
53km/h · peak gust
6%lowest humidity

It had gone 36 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 46.6 mm on 24 Mar.

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
    17,740 ha reached on 12 Mar
    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)
12 Mar 41.3 °C 14 % 38 km/h 0.2 mm Very extreme 73
13 Mar 40.1 °C 14 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
14 Mar 39.4 °C 13 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 80
15 Mar 38.0 °C 8 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 80
16 Mar 36.6 °C 7 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 72
17 Mar 36.1 °C 6 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
18 Mar 36.5 °C 7 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 69
19 Mar 37.7 °C 9 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 73
20 Mar 38.2 °C 12 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 77
21 Mar 38.4 °C 11 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 85
22 Mar 38.1 °C 17 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
23 Mar after 34.1 °C 30 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 68
24 Mar after 26.3 °C 68 % 71 km/h 46.6 mm Low 6

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 5 Mar 2019
After · 29 Mar 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 · 593Every 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 12 March 2019 and 22 March 2019: 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 17,503 hectares (175.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Barkly (17,740 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 41.3 °C, humidity dropped to 6 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 85, 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.