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Barkly fire, 28 October 2022 Barkly

Out · last detection 5 Nov 2022, 16:33 UTC

The fire started on 28 October 2022 in Barkly, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 12,238 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1149th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3496 with a page). Number 146 in Australia in 2022, of 566.

Burnt area
12,238ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
9days
28 Oct 2022 – 5 Nov 2022
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
28 Oct
2022
Heat detections
491
in a single hotspot: 77 MW
Danger at start
57
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
512MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

5 Nov 2022
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 28 Oct5 Nov

How it evolved, day by day

28 Oct 2022 · 6 MW · 4 29 Oct 2022 · 196 MW · 34 30 Oct 2022 · 557 MW · 54 31 Oct 2022 · 1,608 MW · 89 1 Nov 2022 · 339 MW · 63 2 Nov 2022 · 309 MW · 60 3 Nov 2022 · 380 MW · 66 4 Nov 2022 · 257 MW · 61 5 Nov 2022 · 956 MW · 55
28 Oct 30 Oct 31 Oct 1 Nov 3 Nov 5 Nov

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
52km/h · peak gust
6%lowest humidity

It had gone 22 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.7 mm on 10 Nov.

This area had burned before

28% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,516 ha in 2016, 2,204 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,476 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Barkly where it started
    12,200 ha reached on 27 Oct
    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)
27 Oct 40.3 °C 19 % 40 km/h 0.2 mm Extreme 57
28 Oct 36.6 °C 24 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
29 Oct 40.5 °C 15 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 69
30 Oct 42.1 °C 16 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 67
31 Oct 40.6 °C 22 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
1 Nov 36.7 °C 18 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 68
2 Nov 34.2 °C 8 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 71
3 Nov 33.3 °C 10 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 77
4 Nov 33.9 °C 8 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 72
5 Nov 36.2 °C 6 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
6 Nov after 38.4 °C 7 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 72
7 Nov after 37.4 °C 20 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
8 Nov after 38.8 °C 19 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
9 Nov after 38.4 °C 23 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
10 Nov after 36.8 °C 32 % 38 km/h 4.7 mm High 22

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 21 Oct 2022
After · 12 Nov 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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 26 October 2022 the air beside the fire reached 114 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 46: 3.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak114 µg/m³
Days over the guideline8 days
PM10165 µg/m³
Optical depth1.62
26272829303112345678
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 491Every 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 28 October 2022 and 5 November 2022: 9 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 12,238 hectares (122.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Barkly (12,200 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 42.1 °C, humidity dropped to 6 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 77, 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.