How long did the Barkly fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 24 December 2024 and 26 December 2024: 3 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 6,830 hectares (68.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Barkly (6,795 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 41.4 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 56, 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 · 2024-12-24 → 2024-12-26

Barkly fire, 24 December 2024 Barkly

Out · last detection 26 Dec 2024, 04:20 UTC

The fire started on 24 December 2024 in Barkly, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,830 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 2350th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3496 with a page). Number 421 in Australia in 2024, of 638.

Burnt area: 6,830ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 3days; 24 Dec 2024 – 26 Dec 2024
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 24 Dec; 2024
Heat detections: 197; in a single hotspot: 179 MW
Danger at start: 38; High · FWI index
Energy released: 3.9GW; sum of detected power

Play back 26 Dec 2024

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 24 Dec26 Dec

How it evolved, day by day

242526

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

The weather it burned in

41°high

41km/h · peak gust

12%lowest humidity

It had gone 13 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

56% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,014 ha in 2016, 2,884 ha in 2017.

2,808 ha Barkly fire, April 2017 10,957 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

What happened to each town

Barkly where it started

6,795 ha reached on 20 Dec

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)
20 Dec	40.3 °C	26 %	37 km/h	0.3 mm	High 38
21 Dec	39.0 °C	24 %	41 km/h	0.2 mm	Very high 44
22 Dec	40.0 °C	23 %	32 km/h	1.4 mm	High 30
23 Dec	39.9 °C	18 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
24 Dec	39.7 °C	12 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
25 Dec	40.3 °C	17 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
26 Dec	41.4 °C	18 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
27 Dec after	39.1 °C	25 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
28 Dec after	37.6 °C	34 %	29 km/h	0.7 mm	High 28
29 Dec after	37.6 °C	24 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
30 Dec after	39.6 °C	22 %	37 km/h	0.2 mm	Very high 46
31 Dec after	39.5 °C	12 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
1 Jan after	40.8 °C	10 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 55
2 Jan after	40.3 °C	14 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
3 Jan after	37.8 °C	25 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 55
4 Jan after	38.2 °C	19 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
5 Jan after	38.3 °C	23 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 17 Dec 2024

After · 2 Jan 2025

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 26 December 2024 the air beside the fire reached 23 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak23 µg/m³

Days over the guideline0 days

PM1026 µg/m³

Optical depth0.52

WHO 15

2223242526272829

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 · 197Every 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 24 December 2024 and 26 December 2024: 3 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 6,830 hectares (68.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Barkly (6,795 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 41.4 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 56, 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

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