Barkly fire, 1 October 2024 Barkly
The fire started on 1 October 2024 in Barkly, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 29,244 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 382th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3496 with a page). Number 56 in Australia in 2024, of 638.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Barkly · 2017Barkly · 2023Barkly · 2023Barkly · 2019
- Burnt area
- 29,244ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 7days
- 1 Oct 2024 – 7 Oct 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- local government areas
- Started on
- 1 Oct
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 1,057
- in a single hotspot: 187 MW
- Danger at start
- 53
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 1.9GW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 5 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
38% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 10,578 ha in 2017, 127 ha in 2019, 1,226 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 11,252 ha that had burned before.
- 1,384 ha Barkly fire, September 2017 14,028 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 772 ha Barkly fire, September 2023 319,609 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 239 ha Barkly fire, December 2023 7,822 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 72 ha Barkly fire, December 2019 5,641 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 10 ha Barkly fire, September 2017 8,664 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Barkly where it started29,525 ha reached on 1 Oct0.1 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 Oct | 32.4 °C | 18 % | 54 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 2 Oct | 33.7 °C | 14 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 3 Oct | 35.3 °C | 12 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 4 Oct | 37.0 °C | 13 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 5 Oct | 35.8 °C | 19 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 6 Oct | 36.8 °C | 16 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 7 Oct | 35.7 °C | 22 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 8 Oct after | 37.4 °C | 13 % | 51 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 71 |
| 9 Oct after | 36.9 °C | 11 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 65 |
| 10 Oct after | 35.9 °C | 6 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 71 |
| 11 Oct after | 35.4 °C | 4 % | 57 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 85 |
| 12 Oct after | 36.7 °C | 9 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 80 |
| 13 Oct after | 34.9 °C | 21 % | 44 km/h | 0.2 mm | Extreme 62 |
| 14 Oct after | 34.1 °C | 28 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 15 Oct after | 36.5 °C | 20 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 16 Oct after | 37.5 °C | 21 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 17 Oct after | 37.6 °C | 20 % | 56 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 69 |
| 18 Oct after | 36.0 °C | 27 % | 23 km/h | 0.1 mm | Very high 42 |
| 19 Oct after | 36.8 °C | 25 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 20 Oct after | 37.4 °C | 14 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 66 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · CopernicusOn 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).
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 · 1,057Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Barkly fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 1 October 2024 and 7 October 2024: 7 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 29,244 hectares (292.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Barkly (29,525 ha, 0.1 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 37.4 °C, humidity dropped to 6 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 71, 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
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
How we know this
- Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 1,057 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.
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.