How long did the Barkly fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 4 April 2022 and 10 April 2022: 7 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 7,773 hectares (77.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Barkly (7,736 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 38.6 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 74, 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.

AU · Australia · 2022-04-04 → 2022-04-10

Barkly fire, 4 April 2022 Barkly

Out · last detection 10 Apr 2022, 15:10 UTC

The fire started on 4 April 2022 in Barkly, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,773 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 2015th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3496 with a page). Number 295 in Australia in 2022, of 566.

Compare with…

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

Burnt area: 7,773ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 7days; 4 Apr 2022 – 10 Apr 2022
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 4 Apr; 2022
Heat detections: 349; in a single hotspot: 63 MW
Danger at start: 60; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 403MW; detected power per day, on average

Play back 10 Apr 2022

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Apr10 Apr

How it evolved, day by day

4 Apr 5 Apr 6 Apr 7 Apr 8 Apr 9 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

39°high

49km/h · peak gust

7%lowest humidity

It had gone 16 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

23% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,794 ha in 2017.

611 ha Barkly fire, August 2017 111,996 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 4.9% of the area of London (78 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

7,736 ha reached on 2 Apr

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)
30 Mar	36.0 °C	13 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 60
31 Mar	35.6 °C	11 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 66
1 Apr	34.2 °C	16 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 62
2 Apr	35.7 °C	14 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 59
3 Apr	36.5 °C	16 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
4 Apr	34.7 °C	32 %	40 km/h	0.1 mm	Very high 49
5 Apr	37.0 °C	13 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
6 Apr	37.8 °C	7 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 68
7 Apr	37.0 °C	10 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 74
8 Apr	35.0 °C	9 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 69
9 Apr	36.5 °C	10 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 55
10 Apr	38.6 °C	13 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 63
11 Apr after	38.7 °C	14 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 69
12 Apr after	35.5 °C	31 %	41 km/h	0.1 mm	Extreme 54
13 Apr after	37.0 °C	26 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
14 Apr after	37.0 °C	15 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
15 Apr after	37.3 °C	14 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
16 Apr after	37.0 °C	15 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 64
17 Apr after	36.0 °C	17 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
18 Apr after	36.5 °C	17 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 55
19 Apr after	36.5 °C	18 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
20 Apr after	35.3 °C	17 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 66

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 28 Mar 2022

After · 17 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 · 349Every 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 4 April 2022 and 10 April 2022: 7 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 7,773 hectares (77.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Barkly (7,736 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 38.6 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 74, 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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. 349 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.

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