How long did the Barkly fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 6 October 2024 to 20 October 2024 (15 days). The perimeter dates it from 6 October 2024 to 13 October 2024.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 37,947 hectares (379.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Barkly (37,680 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 38.1 °C, humidity dropped to 6 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 70, 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.

AU · Australia · 2024-10-06 → 2024-10-20

Barkly fire, 6 October 2024 Barkly

Out · last detection 21 Oct 2024, 16:06 UTC

The fire started on 6 October 2024 in Barkly, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 37,947 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 272th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3503 with a page). Number 43 in Australia in 2024, of 636.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Barkly · 2024 Barkly · 2025 Roper Gulf · 2025

Burnt area: 37,947ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 15days; 6 Oct 2024 – 20 Oct 2024
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 6 Oct; 2024
Heat detections: 1,463; in a single hotspot: 317 MW
Danger at start: 44; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 1.3GW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Oct20 Oct

Play back 21 Oct 2024

How it evolved, day by day

6 Oct 9 Oct 10 Oct 12 Oct 15 Oct 18 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

38°high

44km/h · peak gust

6%lowest humidity

It had gone 9 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

5% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 911 ha in 2019, 967 ha in 2021, 301 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,837 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 24% of the area of London (379 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

Barkly where it started

37,680 ha reached on 6 Oct

0.1 %

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)
6 Oct	36.7 °C	28 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
7 Oct	37.0 °C	25 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
8 Oct	37.9 °C	20 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
9 Oct	38.1 °C	17 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
10 Oct	37.9 °C	10 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 62
11 Oct	38.0 °C	6 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 70
12 Oct	37.7 °C	15 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 55
13 Oct	35.3 °C	27 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
14 Oct	35.8 °C	31 %	27 km/h	0.2 mm	Very high 40
15 Oct	36.3 °C	28 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
16 Oct	37.9 °C	25 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
17 Oct	38.0 °C	23 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
18 Oct	36.7 °C	27 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
19 Oct	37.1 °C	28 %	31 km/h	0.6 mm	Very high 42
20 Oct	36.8 °C	32 %	34 km/h	0.2 mm	Very high 41
21 Oct after	39.4 °C	10 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 61
22 Oct after	39.1 °C	10 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
23 Oct after	39.1 °C	20 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 57
24 Oct after	39.1 °C	19 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
25 Oct after	39.0 °C	16 %	53 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 74
26 Oct after	38.2 °C	11 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 66
27 Oct after	39.3 °C	14 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
28 Oct after	38.0 °C	23 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
29 Oct after	39.5 °C	14 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 68
30 Oct after	36.9 °C	25 %	28 km/h	0.1 mm	Extreme 52

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 29 Sept 2024

After · 27 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 12 October 2024 the air beside the fire reached 97 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 42: 2.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak97 µg/m³

Days over the guideline4 days

PM10139 µg/m³

Optical depth1.40

WHO 15

45678910111213141516

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 · 1,463Every 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?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 6 October 2024 to 20 October 2024 (15 days). The perimeter dates it from 6 October 2024 to 13 October 2024.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 37,947 hectares (379.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Barkly (37,680 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 38.1 °C, humidity dropped to 6 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 70, 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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

What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

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.

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 6 October 2024 to 13 October 2024. 1,463 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.

Where it burned