How long did the Barkly fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 4 June 2026 and 4 June 2026: 1 day 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 13,304 hectares (133.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Barkly (13,212 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 30.1 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 43 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, class Very high.

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 · 2026-06-04 → 2026-06-04

Barkly fire, 4 June 2026 Barkly

Out · last detection 5 Jun 2026, 16:17 UTC

The fire started on 4 June 2026 in Barkly, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 13,304 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1035th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3493 with a page). Number 223 in Australia in 2026, of 848.

Burnt area: 13,304ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 1day; 4 Jun 2026 – 4 Jun 2026
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 4 Jun; 2026
Heat detections: 163; in a single hotspot: 307 MW
Danger at start: 33; High · FWI index
Energy released: 5.9GW; sum of detected power

Play back 5 Jun 2026

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Jun4 Jun

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

30°high

43km/h · peak gust

24%lowest humidity

It had gone 16 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

64% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,211 ha in 2016, 1,623 ha in 2017, 1,239 ha in 2021, 4,947 ha in 2022, 465 ha in 2023, 1,253 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 8,450 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

Barkly where it started

13,212 ha reached on 4 Jun

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)
4 Jun	30.1 °C	30 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
5 Jun after	27.7 °C	29 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
6 Jun after	24.2 °C	27 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
7 Jun after	24.1 °C	24 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
8 Jun after	26.4 °C	26 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
9 Jun after	28.3 °C	40 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
10 Jun after	29.9 °C	36 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
11 Jun after	29.9 °C	35 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
12 Jun after	30.0 °C	36 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
13 Jun after	29.4 °C	38 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
14 Jun after	29.6 °C	36 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
15 Jun after	29.2 °C	32 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
16 Jun after	29.8 °C	31 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
17 Jun after	30.0 °C	38 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
18 Jun after	28.2 °C	41 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
19 Jun after	24.9 °C	33 %	37 km/h	0.1 mm	High 33
20 Jun after	22.8 °C	27 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
21 Jun after	23.7 °C	34 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 28 May 2026

After · 11 Jun 2026

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 6 June 2026 the air beside the fire reached 14 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak14 µg/m³

Days over the guideline0 days

PM1014 µg/m³

Optical depth0.14

234567891011121314

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 · 163Every 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 4 June 2026 and 4 June 2026: 1 day 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 13,304 hectares (133.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Barkly (13,212 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 30.1 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 43 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, class Very high.
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