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Barkly fire, 27 May 2023 Barkly

Out · last detection 10 Jun 2023, 04:13 UTC

The fire started on 27 May 2023 in Barkly, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,994 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 2296th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3503 with a page). Number 868 in Australia in 2023, of 1235.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Barkly · 2023Barkly · 2023Barkly · 2017Barkly · 2025

Burnt area
6,994ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
15days
27 May 2023 – 10 Jun 2023
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
27 May
2023
Heat detections
288
in a single hotspot: 194 MW
Danger at start
49
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
319MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 27 May10 Jun
10 Jun 2023

How it evolved, day by day

27 May 2023 · 95 MW · 23 28 May 2023 · 59 MW · 18 29 May 2023 · 48 MW · 17 30 May 2023 · 31 MW · 8 31 May 2023 · 29 MW · 6 1 Jun 2023 · 175 MW · 26 2 Jun 2023 · 173 MW · 35 3 Jun 2023 · 85 MW · 24 4 Jun 2023 · 185 MW · 22 5 Jun 2023 · 54 MW · 12 6 Jun 2023 · 111 MW · 11 7 Jun 2023 · 3,667 MW · 69 8 Jun 2023 · 37 MW · 8 9 Jun 2023 · 32 MW · 8 10 Jun 2023 · 4 MW · 1
27 May 30 May 2 Jun 5 Jun 7 Jun 8 Jun

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

The weather it burned in

32°high
49km/h · peak gust
15%lowest humidity

It had gone 41 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4.4% of the area of London (70 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

  1. Barkly where it started
    7,076 ha reached on 27 May
    0.0 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance runs from the point marking the centre of each area to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2025
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, satellite-based estimate).

This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu

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 May 20.4 °C 23 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
28 May 20.7 °C 25 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
29 May 23.0 °C 21 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
30 May 23.9 °C 23 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
31 May 26.1 °C 15 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
1 Jun 27.6 °C 17 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
2 Jun 28.3 °C 21 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
3 Jun 28.9 °C 25 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
4 Jun 28.9 °C 29 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
5 Jun 30.1 °C 28 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
6 Jun 29.6 °C 31 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
7 Jun 31.7 °C 27 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
8 Jun 28.6 °C 33 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
9 Jun 26.9 °C 29 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
10 Jun 25.5 °C 19 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
11 Jun after 26.4 °C 13 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
12 Jun after 27.4 °C 13 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
13 Jun after 27.2 °C 18 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
14 Jun after 25.2 °C 20 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
15 Jun after 26.1 °C 19 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
16 Jun after 25.5 °C 20 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
17 Jun after 26.3 °C 21 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
18 Jun after 25.8 °C 18 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
19 Jun after 26.1 °C 13 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
20 Jun after 26.1 °C 15 % 37 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 2023
After · 17 Jun 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 11 June 2023 the air beside the fire reached 34 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 19: 1.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak34 µg/m³
Days over the guideline1 day
PM1053 µg/m³
Optical depth0.71
2526272829303112345678910111213
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 · 288Every 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 2023 and 10 June 2023: 15 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 6,994 hectares (69.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Barkly (7,076 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 31.7 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

History of this page Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

RSS Changes to this page

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.

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. 288 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.
  • Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

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.