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Barkly fire, 27 May 2022 Barkly

Out · last detection 31 May 2022, 04:44 UTC

The fire started on 27 May 2022 in Barkly, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 16,652 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 792th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3496 with a page). Number 88 in Australia in 2022, of 566.

Burnt area
16,652ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
5days
27 May 2022 – 31 May 2022
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
27 May
2022
Heat detections
485
in a single hotspot: 231 MW
Danger at start
55
Extreme · FWI index
Energy released
10.8GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

31 May 2022
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 27 May31 May

How it evolved, day by day

2728293031

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

The weather it burned in

34°high
44km/h · peak gust
13%lowest humidity

It had gone 43 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

20% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,237 ha in 2016, 930 ha in 2017, 1,124 ha in 2018, 82 ha in 2021.

What happened to each town

  1. Barkly where it started
    16,545 ha reached on 26 May
    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)
26 May 32.6 °C 14 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
27 May 31.7 °C 14 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
28 May 32.0 °C 13 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
29 May 32.6 °C 16 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
30 May 33.8 °C 15 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
31 May 32.2 °C 20 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
1 Jun after 32.2 °C 22 % 43 km/h 0.1 mm Extreme 50
2 Jun after 33.7 °C 33 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
3 Jun after 33.3 °C 38 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
4 Jun after 33.5 °C 29 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
5 Jun after 34.2 °C 29 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
6 Jun after 34.1 °C 29 % 39 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 45
7 Jun after 30.7 °C 29 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
8 Jun after 26.2 °C 20 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
9 Jun after 24.2 °C 17 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
10 Jun after 23.5 °C 16 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 20 May 2022
After · 7 Jun 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 · 485Every 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 27 May 2022 and 31 May 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 16,652 hectares (166.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Barkly (16,545 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.8 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 58, 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.