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Barkly fire, 15 October 2023 Barkly

Out · last detection 1 Nov 2023, 04:13 UTC

The fire started on 15 October 2023 in Barkly, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 18 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 47,394 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 184th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3508 with a page). Number 99 in Australia in 2023, of 1237.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Barkly · 2024Barkly · 2023Barkly · 2024Barkly · 2023

Burnt area
47,394ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
18days
15 Oct 2023 – 1 Nov 2023
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
15 Oct
2023
Heat detections
2,012
in a single hotspot: 330 MW
Danger at start
70
Very extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
1.8GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 Oct1 Nov
1 Nov 2023

How it evolved, day by day

15 Oct 2023 · 2,133 MW · 61 16 Oct 2023 · 2,194 MW · 128 17 Oct 2023 · 9,525 MW · 257 18 Oct 2023 · 1,546 MW · 179 19 Oct 2023 · 3,570 MW · 137 20 Oct 2023 · 2,779 MW · 130 21 Oct 2023 · 1,788 MW · 153 22 Oct 2023 · 737 MW · 109 23 Oct 2023 · 970 MW · 105 24 Oct 2023 · 1,469 MW · 126 25 Oct 2023 · 865 MW · 92 26 Oct 2023 · 312 MW · 84 27 Oct 2023 · 345 MW · 84 28 Oct 2023 · 726 MW · 121 29 Oct 2023 · 1,000 MW · 110 30 Oct 2023 · 813 MW · 64 31 Oct 2023 · 2,459 MW · 71 1 Nov 2023 · 14 MW · 1
15 Oct 17 Oct 18 Oct 21 Oct 24 Oct 27 Oct 30 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
65km/h · peak gust
4%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.0 mm on 10 Nov.

This area had burned before

7% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,229 ha in 2017.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 30% of the area of London (474 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
    47,911 ha reached on 15 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)
15 Oct 33.2 °C 5 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 70
16 Oct 34.6 °C 8 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 87
17 Oct 33.0 °C 8 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 87
18 Oct 33.9 °C 7 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 73
19 Oct 35.9 °C 6 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
20 Oct 37.7 °C 5 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
21 Oct 37.9 °C 5 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
22 Oct 36.9 °C 9 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 77
23 Oct 37.5 °C 10 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 69
24 Oct 39.7 °C 10 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 72
25 Oct 35.7 °C 12 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 91
26 Oct 31.0 °C 10 % 65 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 94
27 Oct 31.9 °C 7 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 88
28 Oct 34.1 °C 4 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 76
29 Oct 36.2 °C 4 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 72
30 Oct 38.5 °C 6 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
31 Oct 40.0 °C 11 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 72
1 Nov 39.4 °C 14 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 76
2 Nov after 37.0 °C 16 % 46 km/h 0.1 mm Very extreme 76
3 Nov after 38.7 °C 16 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
4 Nov after 38.3 °C 10 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 77
5 Nov after 38.4 °C 8 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 74
6 Nov after 38.5 °C 8 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 68
7 Nov after 39.5 °C 8 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
8 Nov after 39.5 °C 10 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
9 Nov after 36.1 °C 14 % 39 km/h 0.3 mm Extreme 61
10 Nov after 33.6 °C 44 % 40 km/h 3.0 mm Moderate 17

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 8 Oct 2023
After · 8 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 21 October 2023 the air beside the fire reached 77 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 38: 2.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak77 µg/m³
Days over the guideline13 days
PM10121 µg/m³
Optical depth1.53
13141516171819202122232425262728293031123
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 · 2,012Every 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 15 October 2023 to 1 November 2023 (18 days). The perimeter dates it from 15 October 2023 to 31 October 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 47,394 hectares (473.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Barkly (47,911 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 40.0 °C, humidity dropped to 4 % and gusts hit 65 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 94, 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. Last day with fire: 31 October 2023 → 1 November 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; 3 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 15 October 2023 to 31 October 2023. 2,012 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.