Skip to content
worldfires
AU · Australia · →

Barkly fire, 23 April 2023 Barkly

Out · last detection 26 Apr 2023, 16:09 UTC

The fire started on 23 April 2023 in Barkly, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,536 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 3057th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3496 with a page). Number 1108 in Australia in 2023, of 1235.

Burnt area
5,536ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
3days
23 Apr 2023 – 25 Apr 2023
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
23 Apr
2023
Heat detections
159
in a single hotspot: 79 MW
Danger at start
44
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
1.2GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

26 Apr 2023
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 23 Apr25 Apr

How it evolved, day by day

23242526

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
52km/h · peak gust
29%lowest humidity

It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

56% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,957 ha in 2017, 196 ha in 2018.

What happened to each town

  1. Barkly where it started
    5,507 ha reached on 23 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)
23 Apr 33.0 °C 29 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
24 Apr 33.6 °C 40 % 48 km/h 0.1 mm High 37
25 Apr 34.4 °C 33 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
26 Apr after 33.9 °C 33 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
27 Apr after 33.3 °C 26 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
28 Apr after 33.7 °C 24 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
29 Apr after 32.7 °C 30 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
30 Apr after 28.9 °C 29 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
1 May after 30.4 °C 18 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
2 May after 31.3 °C 21 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
3 May after 31.5 °C 22 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
4 May after 33.3 °C 26 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
5 May after 33.8 °C 28 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 16 Apr 2023
After · 2 May 2023

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 24 April 2023 the air beside the fire reached 19 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak19 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1038 µg/m³
Optical depth0.36
2122232425262728
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 · 159Every 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 23 April 2023 and 25 April 2023: 3 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 5,536 hectares (55.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Barkly (5,507 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.4 °C, humidity dropped to 29 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, 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

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.