How long did the Barkly fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 22 March 2023 and 1 April 2023: 11 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 27,295 hectares (273.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Barkly (27,466 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 36.6 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 41, class Very high.

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 · 2023-03-22 → 2023-04-01

Barkly fire, March 2023 Barkly

Out · last detection 1 Apr 2023, 04:27 UTC

The fire started on 22 March 2023 in Barkly, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 27,295 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 406th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3496 with a page). Number 191 in Australia in 2023, of 1235.

Burnt area: 27,295ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 11days; 22 Mar 2023 – 1 Apr 2023
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 22 Mar; 2023
Heat detections: 962; in a single hotspot: 136 MW
Danger at start: 32; High · FWI index
Energy released: 9.9GW; sum of detected power

Play back 1 Apr 2023

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 22 Mar1 Apr

How it evolved, day by day

222324252627282930311

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

The weather it burned in

37°high

47km/h · peak gust

19%lowest humidity

It had gone 18 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

1% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 107 ha in 2018, 158 ha in 2021.

107 ha Barkly fire, July 2018 7,972 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

What happened to each town

Barkly where it started

27,466 ha reached on 22 Mar

0.1 %

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)
22 Mar	36.5 °C	29 %	47 km/h	0.9 mm	High 32
23 Mar	35.3 °C	31 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
24 Mar	36.6 °C	22 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
25 Mar	36.1 °C	20 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
26 Mar	36.1 °C	19 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
27 Mar	35.9 °C	21 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
28 Mar	36.3 °C	22 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
29 Mar	36.4 °C	21 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
30 Mar	35.2 °C	30 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
31 Mar	34.9 °C	33 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
1 Apr	34.4 °C	36 %	38 km/h	1.2 mm	High 26
2 Apr after	32.1 °C	34 %	36 km/h	0.4 mm	High 27
3 Apr after	34.9 °C	26 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
4 Apr after	35.6 °C	25 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
5 Apr after	36.0 °C	24 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
6 Apr after	35.9 °C	28 %	27 km/h	0.4 mm	High 35
7 Apr after	36.9 °C	24 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
8 Apr after	35.5 °C	30 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 50
9 Apr after	34.3 °C	23 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
10 Apr after	34.7 °C	26 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
11 Apr after	34.9 °C	29 %	37 km/h	0.3 mm	Very high 43

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 15 Mar 2023

After · 8 Apr 2023

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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 25 March 2023 the air beside the fire reached 52 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak52 µg/m³

Days over the guideline0 days

PM1076 µg/m³

Optical depth0.20

WHO 15

2021222324252627282930311234

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 · 962Every 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 22 March 2023 and 1 April 2023: 11 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 27,295 hectares (273.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Barkly (27,466 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 36.6 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 41, class Very high.
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.

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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.

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