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Barkly fire, 3 March 2022 Barkly

Out · last detection 7 Mar 2022, 15:48 UTC

The fire started on 3 March 2022 in Barkly, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,216 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 2643th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3496 with a page). Number 405 in Australia in 2022, of 566.

Burnt area
6,216ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
5days
3 Mar 2022 – 7 Mar 2022
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
3 Mar
2022
Heat detections
198
in a single hotspot: 148 MW
Danger at start
47
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
3.9GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

7 Mar 2022
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 3 Mar7 Mar

How it evolved, day by day

3567

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

The weather it burned in

42°high
42km/h · peak gust
14%lowest humidity

It had gone 26 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

36% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,271 ha in 2016, 159 ha in 2017, 1,378 ha in 2018, 21 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,219 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Barkly where it started
    6,175 ha reached on 3 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)
3 Mar 40.0 °C 21 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
4 Mar 40.7 °C 20 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
5 Mar 42.5 °C 14 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
6 Mar 40.3 °C 23 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
7 Mar 41.3 °C 16 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
8 Mar after 39.5 °C 17 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
9 Mar after 37.9 °C 13 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
10 Mar after 38.8 °C 15 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
11 Mar after 39.2 °C 21 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
12 Mar after 38.1 °C 24 % 37 km/h 0.4 mm Extreme 51
13 Mar after 38.0 °C 26 % 34 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 47
14 Mar after 39.1 °C 18 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
15 Mar after 39.7 °C 19 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
16 Mar after 40.0 °C 19 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
17 Mar after 39.0 °C 24 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 24 Feb 2022
After · 14 Mar 2022

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 · 198Every 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 3 March 2022 and 7 March 2022: 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 6,216 hectares (62.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Barkly (6,175 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 42.5 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 54, 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.