Barkly fire, 8 August 2026 Barkly
The fire started on 8 August 2026 in Barkly, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 145,818 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
This page is probably a fire complex, not a single fire. GWIS merges into one perimeter the fires that touch over weeks, which in large burning seasons can join dozens of separate fires. The total area is reliable; the origin and dates refer to the whole complex.
Other fire pages in the same area and on the same dates:
It is the 21th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3496 with a page). Number 3 in Australia in 2026, of 859.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Barkly · 2023Barkly · 2023Barkly · 2017Barkly · 2023
- Burnt area
- 145,818ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 13days
- 8 Aug 2026 – 20 Aug 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- local government areas
- Started on
- 8 Aug
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 3,545
- in a single hotspot: 352 MW
- Danger at start
- 37
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 4.7GW
- 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 30 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
56% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 12,592 ha in 2017, 114 ha in 2018, 76,161 ha in 2023, 2,768 ha in 2024, 3,048 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 81,785 ha that had burned before.
- 35,390 ha Barkly fire, August 2023 51,928 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 23,933 ha Barkly fire, September 2023 319,609 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 5,955 ha Barkly fire, December 2017 47,427 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 4,925 ha Barkly fire, August 2023 67,823 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,660 ha Barkly fire, October 2023 10,510 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,352 ha Barkly fire, October 2023 30,448 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,117 ha Barkly fire, July 2017 32,481 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,043 ha Barkly fire, October 2023 22,349 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 started146,595 ha reached on 8 Aug0.4 %
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.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8 Aug | 31.0 °C | 18 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 9 Aug | 32.8 °C | 23 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 10 Aug | 24.4 °C | 19 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 11 Aug | 31.2 °C | 25 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 12 Aug | 28.5 °C | 21 % | 54 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 13 Aug | 24.3 °C | 24 % | 52 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 14 Aug | 28.5 °C | 17 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 15 Aug | 29.8 °C | 15 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 16 Aug | 30.4 °C | 16 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 17 Aug | 30.8 °C | 25 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 18 Aug | 31.1 °C | 27 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 19 Aug | 32.0 °C | 25 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 20 Aug | 32.5 °C | 19 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 21 Aug after | 33.2 °C | 20 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 22 Aug after | 29.5 °C | 33 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 23 Aug after | 31.1 °C | 26 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 24 Aug after | 32.1 °C | 28 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 25 Aug after | 29.8 °C | 38 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 26 Aug after | 28.3 °C | 29 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 27 Aug after | 28.1 °C | 17 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 28 Aug after | 30.8 °C | 17 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 29 Aug after | 31.8 °C | 19 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 30 Aug after | 30.8 °C | 19 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
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 19 August 2026 the air beside the fire reached 228 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 101: 6.7 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 · 3,545Every 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 8 August 2026 and 20 August 2026: 13 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 145,818 hectares (1,458.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Barkly (146,595 ha, 0.4 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 32.8 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 58, 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›
Satellite cross-check
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.
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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 3,545 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.