Barkly fire, 15 October 2025 Barkly
The fire started on 15 October 2025 in Barkly, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 38,393 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 268th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3511 with a page). Number 97 in Australia in 2025, of 1124.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Barkly · 2023Barkly · 2017Barkly · 2023Barkly · 2023
- Burnt area
- 38,393ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 11days
- 15 Oct 2025 – 25 Oct 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- local government areas
- Started on
- 15 Oct
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 926
- in a single hotspot: 383 MW
- Danger at start
- 80
- Very extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 1.2GW
- 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 more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.9 mm on 27 Oct.
This area had burned before
62% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 8,031 ha in 2017, 21,327 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 23,804 ha that had burned before.
- 15,973 ha Barkly fire, October 2023 63,492 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,103 ha Barkly fire, October 2017 7,505 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,493 ha Barkly fire, October 2023 50,296 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,313 ha Barkly fire, May 2023 5,151 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 813 ha Barkly fire, May 2023 9,959 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 300 ha Barkly fire, October 2023 49,355 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 124 ha Barkly fire, October 2023 125,676 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 54 ha Barkly fire, May 2023 33,827 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 started38,599 ha reached on 15 Oct0.1 %
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 2025Inside 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 15 Oct | 39.3 °C | 16 % | 53 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 80 |
| 16 Oct | 37.4 °C | 22 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 17 Oct | 40.8 °C | 10 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 63 |
| 18 Oct | 40.5 °C | 16 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 68 |
| 19 Oct | 40.5 °C | 14 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 75 |
| 20 Oct | 40.4 °C | 15 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 66 |
| 21 Oct | 39.7 °C | 16 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 79 |
| 22 Oct | 39.6 °C | 10 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 60 |
| 23 Oct | 39.7 °C | 18 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 76 |
| 24 Oct | 41.0 °C | 13 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 78 |
| 25 Oct | 39.8 °C | 20 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 68 |
| 26 Oct after | 40.2 °C | 18 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 60 |
| 27 Oct after | 38.1 °C | 24 % | 30 km/h | 1.9 mm | Very high 39 |
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 22 October 2025 the air beside the fire reached 174 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 78: 5.2 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 · 926Every 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?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 15 October 2025 to 25 October 2025 (11 days). The perimeter dates it from 17 October 2025 to 25 October 2025.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 38,393 hectares (383.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Barkly (38,599 ha, 0.1 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 41.0 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 80, 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
History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Start date: 17 October 2025 → 15 October 2025.
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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 17 October 2025 to 25 October 2025. 926 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.
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.