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Barkly fire, 9 October 2023 Barkly

Out · last detection 26 Oct 2023, 17:17 UTC

The fire started on 9 October 2023 in Barkly, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 63,492 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 127th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3511 with a page). Number 67 in Australia in 2023, of 1235.

Compare with…

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

Burnt area
63,492ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
17days
9 Oct 2023 – 25 Oct 2023
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
9 Oct
2023
Heat detections
2,756
in a single hotspot: 635 MW
Danger at start
81
Very extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
3.3GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 9 Oct25 Oct
26 Oct 2023

How it evolved, day by day

9 Oct 2023 · 11,504 MW · 224 10 Oct 2023 · 11,691 MW · 500 11 Oct 2023 · 3,672 MW · 174 12 Oct 2023 · 647 MW · 133 13 Oct 2023 · 1,430 MW · 136 14 Oct 2023 · 429 MW · 69 15 Oct 2023 · 710 MW · 95 16 Oct 2023 · 10,693 MW · 420 17 Oct 2023 · 11,298 MW · 444 18 Oct 2023 · 572 MW · 73 19 Oct 2023 · 937 MW · 105 20 Oct 2023 · 722 MW · 52 21 Oct 2023 · 419 MW · 49 22 Oct 2023 · 412 MW · 59 23 Oct 2023 · 3,650 MW · 72 24 Oct 2023 · 578 MW · 82 25 Oct 2023 · 173 MW · 39 26 Oct 2023 · 60 MW · 30
9 Oct 10 Oct 12 Oct 15 Oct 18 Oct 21 Oct 24 Oct

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

The weather it burned in

40°high
57km/h · peak gust
5%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

27% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 16,854 ha in 2017.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 40% of the area of London (635 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
    63,811 ha reached on 9 Oct
    0.2 %

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)
9 Oct 35.1 °C 13 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 81
10 Oct 35.0 °C 7 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 76
11 Oct 36.2 °C 11 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 72
12 Oct 37.9 °C 12 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 71
13 Oct 36.7 °C 10 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 87
14 Oct 34.5 °C 9 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 88
15 Oct 34.4 °C 5 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 73
16 Oct 35.6 °C 7 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 87
17 Oct 34.7 °C 9 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 82
18 Oct 35.2 °C 7 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 74
19 Oct 36.8 °C 5 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
20 Oct 38.1 °C 5 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
21 Oct 38.8 °C 6 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
22 Oct 38.8 °C 8 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 82
23 Oct 38.3 °C 11 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 80
24 Oct 40.1 °C 11 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 78
25 Oct 37.2 °C 12 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 88
26 Oct after 33.2 °C 11 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 88
27 Oct after 33.2 °C 7 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 88
28 Oct after 35.2 °C 3 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 78
29 Oct after 37.0 °C 4 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 72
30 Oct after 39.3 °C 8 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
31 Oct after 39.9 °C 15 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 76
1 Nov after 39.5 °C 18 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
2 Nov after 38.0 °C 17 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
3 Nov after 38.9 °C 18 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
4 Nov after 39.7 °C 10 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 80

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 2 Oct 2023
After · 1 Nov 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 20 October 2023 the air beside the fire reached 126 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 53: 3.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak126 µg/m³
Days over the guideline17 days
PM10180 µg/m³
Optical depth1.44
8910111213141516171819202122232425262728
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 · 2,756Every 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?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 9 October 2023 to 25 October 2023 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 10 October 2023 to 25 October 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 63,492 hectares (634.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Barkly (63,811 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 40.1 °C, humidity dropped to 5 % and gusts hit 57 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 88, 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Start date: 10 October 2023 → 9 October 2023.

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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 10 October 2023 to 25 October 2023. 2,756 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.