How long did the Barkly fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 1 October 2024 and 6 October 2024: 6 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 8,313 hectares (83.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Barkly (8,400 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 38.2 °C, humidity dropped to 4 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 86, 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.

AU · Australia · 2024-10-01 → 2024-10-06

Barkly fire, 1 October 2024 Barkly

Out · last detection 6 Oct 2024, 15:48 UTC

The fire started on 1 October 2024 in Barkly, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,313 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1836th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3496 with a page). Number 327 in Australia in 2024, of 638.

Burnt area: 8,313ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 6days; 1 Oct 2024 – 6 Oct 2024
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 1 Oct; 2024
Heat detections: 276; in a single hotspot: 258 MW
Danger at start: 53; Extreme · FWI index
Energy released: 5.5GW; sum of detected power

Play back 6 Oct 2024

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 1 Oct6 Oct

How it evolved, day by day

123456

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

The weather it burned in

38°high

55km/h · peak gust

4%lowest humidity

It had gone 5 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

47% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,918 ha in 2017.

3,286 ha Barkly fire, September 2017 8,664 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

What happened to each town

Barkly where it started

8,400 ha reached on 1 Oct

0.0 %

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)
1 Oct	32.8 °C	18 %	53 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
2 Oct	34.5 °C	14 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
3 Oct	36.0 °C	12 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
4 Oct	37.7 °C	13 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
5 Oct	35.8 °C	20 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 55
6 Oct	37.6 °C	15 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
7 Oct after	36.4 °C	22 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
8 Oct after	38.2 °C	12 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 76
9 Oct after	37.6 °C	11 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 68
10 Oct after	36.8 °C	7 %	51 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 74
11 Oct after	36.0 °C	4 %	55 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 86
12 Oct after	37.2 °C	9 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 82
13 Oct after	35.7 °C	20 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 77
14 Oct after	34.6 °C	27 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
15 Oct after	37.0 °C	21 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
16 Oct after	38.3 °C	21 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 57
17 Oct after	38.5 °C	18 %	56 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 74
18 Oct after	36.3 °C	26 %	22 km/h	0.1 mm	Very high 42
19 Oct after	37.4 °C	24 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
20 Oct after	38.0 °C	14 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 65
21 Oct after	38.7 °C	9 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 68
22 Oct after	38.3 °C	7 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 59
23 Oct after	39.5 °C	8 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 72

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 24 Sept 2024

After · 13 Oct 2024

Before After

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 October 2024 the air beside the fire reached 88 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 50: 3.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak88 µg/m³

Days over the guideline5 days

PM10126 µg/m³

Optical depth1.44

WHO 15

2930123456789

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 · 276Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Australia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Barkly fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 1 October 2024 and 6 October 2024: 6 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 8,313 hectares (83.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Barkly (8,400 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 38.2 °C, humidity dropped to 4 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 86, 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

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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.

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What really happened?

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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.

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.

Where it burned