How long did the Barkly fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 28 December 2024 to 7 January 2025 (11 days). The perimeter dates it from 29 December 2024 to 6 January 2025.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,725 hectares (87.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Barkly (8,776 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 41.9 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 57 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 84, 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 · 2024-12-28 → 2025-01-07

Barkly fire, 28 December 2024 Barkly

Out · last detection 7 Jan 2025, 05:34 UTC

The fire started on 28 December 2024 in Barkly, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,725 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1724th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3503 with a page). Number 298 in Australia in 2024, of 636.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Barkly · 2023 Barkly · 2017 Barkly · 2023 Barkly · 2026

Burnt area: 8,725ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 11days; 28 Dec 2024 – 7 Jan 2025
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 28 Dec; 2024
Heat detections: 367; in a single hotspot: 120 MW
Danger at start: 39; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 392MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 28 Dec7 Jan

Play back 7 Jan 2025

How it evolved, day by day

28 Dec 30 Dec 1 Jan 3 Jan 5 Jan 7 Jan

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

The weather it burned in

42°high

57km/h · peak gust

7%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

13% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 226 ha in 2017, 1,065 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,127 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 5.5% of the area of London (87 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

8,776 ha reached on 28 Dec

0.0 %

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)
28 Dec	38.5 °C	21 %	41 km/h	0.2 mm	Very high 39
29 Dec	37.4 °C	15 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
30 Dec	40.9 °C	11 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 59
31 Dec	41.2 °C	7 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 66
1 Jan	41.2 °C	8 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 64
2 Jan	41.9 °C	12 %	57 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 84
3 Jan	40.1 °C	13 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 67
4 Jan	40.1 °C	13 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
5 Jan	41.4 °C	14 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 65
6 Jan	40.5 °C	19 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 60
7 Jan	40.9 °C	20 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
8 Jan after	41.3 °C	20 %	35 km/h	0.1 mm	Extreme 58
9 Jan after	41.5 °C	20 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
10 Jan after	42.8 °C	15 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 70
11 Jan after	42.4 °C	17 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 57
12 Jan after	40.1 °C	22 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 66
13 Jan after	41.4 °C	21 %	38 km/h	0.1 mm	Extreme 58
14 Jan after	42.1 °C	21 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 68
15 Jan after	38.9 °C	27 %	42 km/h	0.2 mm	Extreme 59
16 Jan after	40.7 °C	20 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
17 Jan after	39.1 °C	12 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 60

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 21 Dec 2024

After · 14 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 29 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

PM1040 µg/m³

Optical depth0.25

WHO 15

2728293031123456789

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 · 367Every 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 28 December 2024 to 7 January 2025 (11 days). The perimeter dates it from 29 December 2024 to 6 January 2025.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,725 hectares (87.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Barkly (8,776 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 41.9 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 57 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 84, 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 · 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?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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 29 December 2024 to 6 January 2025. 367 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