Skip to content
worldfires
AU · Australia · →

Barkly fire, 3 May 2024 Barkly

Out · last detection 15 May 2024, 04:38 UTC

The fire started on 3 May 2024 in Barkly, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 21,522 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 558th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3496 with a page). Number 88 in Australia in 2024, of 638.

Burnt area
21,522ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
13days
3 May 2024 – 15 May 2024
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
3 May
2024
Heat detections
831
in a single hotspot: 165 MW
Danger at start
49
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
5.7GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

15 May 2024
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 3 May15 May

How it evolved, day by day

3456789101112131415

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

The weather it burned in

30°high
52km/h · peak gust
25%lowest humidity

It had gone 32 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

8% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,451 ha in 2017, 333 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,674 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Barkly where it started
    21,748 ha reached on 3 May
    0.1 %

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)
3 May 29.3 °C 31 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
4 May 28.4 °C 31 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
5 May 27.0 °C 25 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
6 May 27.0 °C 28 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
7 May 27.2 °C 30 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
8 May 27.2 °C 31 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
9 May 29.1 °C 41 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
10 May 26.5 °C 45 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
11 May 26.4 °C 42 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
12 May 26.2 °C 36 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
13 May 26.4 °C 31 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
14 May 27.8 °C 33 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
15 May 29.9 °C 31 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
16 May after 30.5 °C 30 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
17 May after 29.9 °C 28 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
18 May after 26.9 °C 30 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
19 May after 23.8 °C 17 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
20 May after 22.7 °C 19 % 60 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
21 May after 22.9 °C 21 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
22 May after 23.4 °C 26 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
23 May after 25.6 °C 21 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
24 May after 28.4 °C 34 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
25 May after 29.7 °C 26 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 38

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 26 Apr 2024
After · 22 May 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 5 May 2024 the air beside the fire reached 20 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak20 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1031 µg/m³
Optical depth0.32
123456789101112131415161718
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 · 831Every 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 3 May 2024 and 15 May 2024: 13 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 21,522 hectares (215.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Barkly (21,748 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 29.9 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 52 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

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.