How long did the Barkly fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 21 August 2026 and 23 August 2026: 3 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 5,440 hectares (54.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Barkly (5,481 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 33.5 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 46 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.

AU · Australia · 2026-08-21 → 2026-08-23

Barkly fire, 21 August 2026 Barkly

Out · last detection 23 Aug 2026, 05:27 UTC

The fire started on 21 August 2026 in Barkly, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,440 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 3121th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3496 with a page). Number 754 in Australia in 2026, of 859.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Barkly · 2023 Barkly · 2023 Barkly · 2017 Barkly · 2023

Burnt area: 5,440ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 3days; 21 Aug 2026 – 23 Aug 2026
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 21 Aug; 2026
Heat detections: 157; in a single hotspot: 110 MW
Danger at start: 53; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 505MW; detected power per day, on average

Play back 23 Aug 2026

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 21 Aug23 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

21 Aug 22 Aug 23 Aug

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

The weather it burned in

34°high

46km/h · peak gust

19%lowest humidity

It had gone 43 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

63% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,190 ha in 2016, 155 ha in 2017, 2,168 ha in 2023.

2,146 ha Barkly fire, August 2023 67,823 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.4% of the area of London (54 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

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 started

5,481 ha reached on 21 Aug

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)
21 Aug	33.5 °C	19 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
22 Aug	27.8 °C	34 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
23 Aug	30.9 °C	25 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
24 Aug after	30.8 °C	30 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
25 Aug after	28.5 °C	40 %	32 km/h	0.7 mm	High 29
26 Aug after	27.5 °C	27 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
27 Aug after	27.5 °C	18 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
28 Aug after	30.4 °C	17 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
29 Aug after	31.5 °C	18 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
30 Aug after	30.5 °C	19 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
31 Aug after	30.7 °C	20 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
1 Sept after	31.6 °C	18 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
2 Sept after	32.6 °C	22 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 14 Aug 2026

After · 30 Aug 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 23 August 2026 the air beside the fire reached 74 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 29: 2.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak74 µg/m³

Days over the guideline1 day

PM1075 µg/m³

Optical depth0.66

WHO 15

1920212223242526

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 · 157Every 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 21 August 2026 and 23 August 2026: 3 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 5,440 hectares (54.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Barkly (5,481 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 33.5 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 46 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

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.

Report an error

What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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.

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. 157 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.

How we build fire pages: methodology ›

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