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Barkly fire, June 2025 Barkly

Out · last detection 4 Jul 2025, 04:58 UTC

The fire started on 6 June 2025 in Barkly, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 29 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 21,148 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 570th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3496 with a page). Number 193 in Australia in 2025, of 1124.

Burnt area
21,148ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
29days
6 Jun 2025 – 4 Jul 2025
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
6 Jun
2025
Heat detections
836
in a single hotspot: 173 MW
Danger at start
38
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
4.6GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

4 Jul 2025
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Jun4 Jul

How it evolved, day by day

67891011121314151617181920212223242526272829301234

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

The weather it burned in

31°high
54km/h · peak gust
14%lowest humidity

It had gone 48 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

98% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 426 ha in 2016, 13,844 ha in 2017, 1,557 ha in 2018, 5,419 ha in 2022, 15,515 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 20,635 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Barkly where it started
    21,039 ha reached on 1 Jun
    0.1 %

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)
31 May 25.5 °C 27 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
1 Jun 28.3 °C 30 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
2 Jun 28.5 °C 22 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
3 Jun 27.6 °C 22 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
4 Jun 26.5 °C 23 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
5 Jun 25.8 °C 26 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
6 Jun 28.4 °C 30 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
7 Jun 27.4 °C 18 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
8 Jun 24.1 °C 21 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
9 Jun 22.9 °C 26 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
10 Jun 22.4 °C 26 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
11 Jun 22.7 °C 20 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
12 Jun 23.7 °C 19 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
13 Jun 23.8 °C 19 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
14 Jun 24.5 °C 17 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
15 Jun 26.0 °C 19 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
16 Jun 25.9 °C 18 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
17 Jun 26.3 °C 21 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
18 Jun 27.0 °C 24 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
19 Jun 26.7 °C 30 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
20 Jun 28.1 °C 36 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
21 Jun 27.7 °C 38 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
22 Jun 28.3 °C 32 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
23 Jun 29.0 °C 36 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
24 Jun 30.6 °C 29 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
25 Jun 26.2 °C 21 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
26 Jun 24.4 °C 24 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
27 Jun 25.3 °C 23 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
28 Jun 24.7 °C 26 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
29 Jun 24.8 °C 33 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
30 Jun 24.4 °C 23 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
1 Jul 24.2 °C 23 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
2 Jul 24.6 °C 17 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
3 Jul 25.9 °C 14 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
4 Jul 28.4 °C 15 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
5 Jul after 29.6 °C 25 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
6 Jul after 29.2 °C 19 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
7 Jul after 27.4 °C 16 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
8 Jul after 28.8 °C 10 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
9 Jul after 29.4 °C 9 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
10 Jul after 26.3 °C 17 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
11 Jul after 26.1 °C 20 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
12 Jul after 29.1 °C 23 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
13 Jul after 29.0 °C 17 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
14 Jul after 29.2 °C 17 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 30 May 2025
After · 11 Jul 2025

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 July 2025 the air beside the fire reached 27 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak27 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1029 µg/m³
Optical depth0.26
4567891011121314151617181920212223242526272829301234567
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 · 836Every 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 timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Australia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Barkly fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 6 June 2025 and 4 July 2025: 29 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 21,148 hectares (211.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Barkly (21,039 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 30.6 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 51, 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

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?

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.