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Barkly fire, 19 December 2023 Barkly

Out · last detection 28 Dec 2023, 04:44 UTC

The fire started on 19 December 2023 in Barkly, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 17,187 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 761th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3508 with a page). Number 329 in Australia in 2023, of 1237.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Barkly · 2024Barkly · 2024Barkly · 2017Barkly · 2024

Burnt area
17,187ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
10days
19 Dec 2023 – 28 Dec 2023
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
19 Dec
2023
Heat detections
563
in a single hotspot: 743 MW
Danger at start
42
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
714MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 19 Dec28 Dec
28 Dec 2023

How it evolved, day by day

19 Dec 2023 · 33 MW · 5 20 Dec 2023 · 2,108 MW · 222 21 Dec 2023 · 489 MW · 85 22 Dec 2023 · 2,677 MW · 98 23 Dec 2023 · 1,084 MW · 74 24 Dec 2023 · 287 MW · 17 25 Dec 2023 · 160 MW · 27 26 Dec 2023 · 129 MW · 15 27 Dec 2023 · 50 MW · 8 28 Dec 2023 · 123 MW · 12
19 Dec 21 Dec 22 Dec 23 Dec 25 Dec 27 Dec

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

The weather it burned in

43°high
53km/h · peak gust
5%lowest humidity

It had gone 21 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 12.5 mm on 7 Jan.

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 11% of the area of London (172 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
    17,398 ha reached on 19 Dec
    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)
19 Dec 39.6 °C 31 % 46 km/h 1.4 mm Very high 42
20 Dec 39.4 °C 15 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
21 Dec 39.8 °C 13 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
22 Dec 39.1 °C 7 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
23 Dec 41.2 °C 5 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
24 Dec 41.2 °C 14 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 76
25 Dec 39.7 °C 12 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 77
26 Dec 39.6 °C 12 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 72
27 Dec 40.3 °C 9 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
28 Dec 43.0 °C 8 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
29 Dec after 44.4 °C 8 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
30 Dec after 44.7 °C 9 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 86
31 Dec after 40.8 °C 8 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 86
1 Jan after 40.9 °C 6 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 69
2 Jan after 41.6 °C 8 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 68
3 Jan after 40.8 °C 13 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 80
4 Jan after 39.0 °C 20 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
5 Jan after 39.7 °C 21 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
6 Jan after 37.0 °C 34 % 34 km/h 0.9 mm Very high 39
7 Jan after 30.7 °C 58 % 29 km/h 12.5 mm Very low 5

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 12 Dec 2023
After · 4 Jan 2024

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 December 2023 the air beside the fire reached 54 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 17: 1.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak54 µg/m³
Days over the guideline2 days
PM10165 µg/m³
Optical depth1.47
1718192021222324252627282930
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 · 563Every 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 19 December 2023 to 28 December 2023 (10 days). The perimeter dates it from 19 December 2023 to 27 December 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 17,187 hectares (171.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Barkly (17,398 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 43.0 °C, humidity dropped to 5 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 77, 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 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
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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.

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 19 December 2023 to 27 December 2023. 563 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.