Barkly fire, 9 January 2026 Barkly
The fire started on 9 January 2026 in Barkly, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 11,137 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 1276th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3496 with a page). Number 291 in Australia in 2026, of 859.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Barkly · 2023Barkly · 2017Barkly · 2017Barkly · 2023
- Burnt area
- 11,137ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 5days
- 9 Jan 2026 – 13 Jan 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- local government areas
- Started on
- 9 Jan
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 263
- in a single hotspot: 493 MW
- Danger at start
- 27
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 814MW
- 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 13 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.5 mm on 16 Jan.
This area had burned before
88% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 594 ha in 2016, 5,794 ha in 2017, 738 ha in 2018, 763 ha in 2021, 6,313 ha in 2023, 237 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 9,815 ha that had burned before.
- 4,958 ha Barkly fire, August 2023 42,746 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,170 ha Barkly fire, September 2017 5,311 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,453 ha Barkly fire, September 2017 5,424 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 926 ha Barkly fire, September 2023 6,465 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 161 ha Barkly fire, November 2024 15,771 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 76 ha Barkly fire, October 2024 28,232 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 started11,142 ha reached on 9 Jan0.0 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9 Jan | 36.9 °C | 29 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 10 Jan | 37.4 °C | 27 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 11 Jan | 39.7 °C | 17 % | 53 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 12 Jan | 41.2 °C | 10 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 13 Jan | 41.4 °C | 9 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 14 Jan after | 39.4 °C | 14 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 15 Jan after | 38.5 °C | 31 % | 57 km/h | 0.3 mm | Very high 49 |
| 16 Jan after | 35.2 °C | 44 % | 58 km/h | 1.5 mm | High 28 |
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 11 January 2026 the air beside the fire reached 35 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO 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 · 263Every 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?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 9 January 2026 and 13 January 2026: 5 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 11,137 hectares (111.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Barkly (11,142 ha, 0.0 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 41.4 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 53, 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
How we know this
- Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 263 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.
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.