How long did the Barkly fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 29 March 2022 and 12 April 2022: 15 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 27,452 hectares (274.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Barkly (27,300 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 38.5 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 69, 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.

AU · Australia · 2022-03-29 → 2022-04-12

Barkly fire, 29 March 2022 Barkly

Out · last detection 12 Apr 2022, 05:03 UTC

The fire started on 29 March 2022 in Barkly, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 27,452 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 404th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3503 with a page). Number 30 in Australia in 2022, of 566.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Barkly · 2017 Barkly · 2025 Barkly · 2025 Barkly · 2022

Burnt area: 27,452ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 15days; 29 Mar 2022 – 12 Apr 2022
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 29 Mar; 2022
Heat detections: 1,065; in a single hotspot: 153 MW
Danger at start: 57; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 609MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 29 Mar12 Apr

Play back 12 Apr 2022

How it evolved, day by day

29 Mar 1 Apr 4 Apr 7 Apr 10 Apr

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

The weather it burned in

38°high

49km/h · peak gust

8%lowest humidity

It had gone 13 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

65% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 588 ha in 2016, 16,013 ha in 2017, 2,515 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 17,823 ha that had burned before.

15,443 ha Barkly fire, August 2017 213,151 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 17% of the area of London (275 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

27,300 ha reached on 29 Mar

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.

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)
29 Mar	35.8 °C	11 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 57
30 Mar	36.0 °C	14 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
31 Mar	35.6 °C	11 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 62
1 Apr	34.3 °C	17 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
2 Apr	35.8 °C	15 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
3 Apr	36.5 °C	16 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 55
4 Apr	34.6 °C	32 %	39 km/h	0.1 mm	Very high 46
5 Apr	37.0 °C	13 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
6 Apr	37.6 °C	8 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 62
7 Apr	36.9 °C	10 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 69
8 Apr	35.2 °C	10 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 65
9 Apr	36.7 °C	10 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
10 Apr	38.5 °C	13 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 59
11 Apr	38.5 °C	15 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 63
12 Apr	35.5 °C	32 %	39 km/h	0.5 mm	Very high 49
13 Apr after	37.1 °C	25 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
14 Apr after	37.0 °C	16 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
15 Apr after	37.1 °C	15 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 55
16 Apr after	36.9 °C	16 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 60
17 Apr after	35.8 °C	18 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
18 Apr after	36.2 °C	18 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
19 Apr after	36.5 °C	19 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
20 Apr after	35.3 °C	17 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 62
21 Apr after	35.3 °C	18 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 65
22 Apr after	35.1 °C	21 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 64

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 22 Mar 2022

After · 19 Apr 2022

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 · 1,065Every 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 29 March 2022 and 12 April 2022: 15 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 27,452 hectares (274.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Barkly (27,300 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 38.5 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 69, 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 · 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 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. 1,065 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.

Where it burned