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Broome fire, 24 June 2018 Broome

Out · last detection 7 Jul 2018, 04:44 UTC

The fire started on 24 June 2018 in Broome, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,900 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1054th largest in Western Australia since 2016 (of 2718 with a page). Number 389 in Australia in 2018, of 923.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Broome · 2026Broome · 2023Derby-West Kimberley · 2021Broome · 2022

Burnt area
9,900ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
13days
24 Jun 2018 – 6 Jul 2018
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
24 Jun
2018
Heat detections
366
in a single hotspot: 135 MW
Danger at start
59
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
335MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 24 Jun6 Jul
7 Jul 2018

How it evolved, day by day

24 Jun 2018 · 648 MW · 95 25 Jun 2018 · 1,923 MW · 144 26 Jun 2018 · 934 MW · 72 27 Jun 2018 · 203 MW · 15 28 Jun 2018 · 10 MW · 1 29 Jun 2018 · 65 MW · 4 30 Jun 2018 · 9 MW · 4 1 Jul 2018 · 7 MW · 2 3 Jul 2018 · 140 MW · 11 4 Jul 2018 · 41 MW · 6 6 Jul 2018 · 6 MW · 4 7 Jul 2018 · 39 MW · 8
24 Jun 25 Jun 26 Jun 28 Jun 30 Jun 3 Jul 6 Jul

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

The weather it burned in

29°high
54km/h · peak gust
19%lowest humidity

It had gone 48 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

3% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 257 ha in 2017.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 6.3% of the area of London (99 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

  1. Broome where it started
    9,893 ha reached on 24 Jun
    0.2 %

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)
24 Jun 26.7 °C 20 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
25 Jun 27.0 °C 22 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
26 Jun 27.2 °C 22 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
27 Jun 27.8 °C 28 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
28 Jun 27.4 °C 29 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
29 Jun 27.1 °C 29 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
30 Jun 27.8 °C 27 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
1 Jul 29.1 °C 36 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
2 Jul 29.3 °C 34 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
3 Jul 29.0 °C 35 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
4 Jul 28.3 °C 31 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
5 Jul 28.9 °C 22 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
6 Jul 28.4 °C 28 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
7 Jul after 29.0 °C 26 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
8 Jul after 28.6 °C 23 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
9 Jul after 26.8 °C 22 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
10 Jul after 26.6 °C 29 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
11 Jul after 27.8 °C 22 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
12 Jul after 27.1 °C 20 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
13 Jul after 26.4 °C 19 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
14 Jul after 26.4 °C 23 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
15 Jul after 26.9 °C 20 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
16 Jul after 27.7 °C 18 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
17 Jul after 27.9 °C 20 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
18 Jul after 28.6 °C 25 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
19 Jul after 29.5 °C 23 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
20 Jul after 28.4 °C 31 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
21 Jul after 28.7 °C 26 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
22 Jul after 28.5 °C 36 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
23 Jul after 26.1 °C 49 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 29

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 17 Jun 2018
After · 13 Jul 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 · 366Every 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 24 June 2018 and 6 July 2018: 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 9,900 hectares (99.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Broome (9,893 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 29.3 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 64, 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
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.

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. 366 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.