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Broome fire, 13 April 2018 Broome

Out · last detection 17 Apr 2018, 05:03 UTC

The fire started on 13 April 2018 in Broome, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 25,108 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 236th largest in Western Australia since 2016 (of 2718 with a page). Number 99 in Australia in 2018, of 923.

Burnt area
25,108ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
4days
13 Apr 2018 – 16 Apr 2018
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
13 Apr
2018
Heat detections
843
in a single hotspot: 482 MW
Danger at start
70
Very extreme · FWI index
Energy released
32.2GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

17 Apr 2018
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 13 Apr16 Apr

How it evolved, day by day

1314151617

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

The weather it burned in

39°high
53km/h · peak gust
8%lowest humidity

It had gone 11 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

2% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 334 ha in 2016, 80 ha in 2017.

What happened to each town

  1. Broome where it started
    25,350 ha reached on 13 Apr
    0.5 %

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)
13 Apr 38.6 °C 17 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 70
14 Apr 37.9 °C 8 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 72
15 Apr 38.0 °C 16 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 69
16 Apr 36.3 °C 22 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
17 Apr after 36.3 °C 23 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
18 Apr after 37.6 °C 19 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
19 Apr after 38.0 °C 18 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
20 Apr after 38.1 °C 19 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
21 Apr after 38.4 °C 24 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
22 Apr after 38.8 °C 20 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
23 Apr after 38.9 °C 15 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
24 Apr after 38.5 °C 15 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
25 Apr after 37.9 °C 10 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
26 Apr after 36.5 °C 14 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 79
27 Apr after 36.7 °C 19 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
28 Apr after 36.7 °C 13 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 67

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 6 Apr 2018
After · 23 Apr 2018

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

Detections table · 843Every 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 timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Australia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Broome fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 13 April 2018 and 16 April 2018: 4 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 25,108 hectares (251.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Broome (25,350 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.6 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 72, 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

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
What do you think is wrong?

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.