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Broome fire, 8 July 2018 Broome

Out · last detection 18 Jul 2018, 06:19 UTC

The fire started on 8 July 2018 in Broome, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,656 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 943th largest in Western Australia since 2016 (of 2718 with a page). Number 352 in Australia in 2018, of 923.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Broome · 2021Broome · 2021Broome · 2025Broome · 2022

Burnt area
10,656ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
11days
8 Jul 2018 – 18 Jul 2018
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
8 Jul
2018
Heat detections
323
in a single hotspot: 150 MW
Danger at start
38
High · FWI index
Average daily power
712MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 8 Jul18 Jul
18 Jul 2018

How it evolved, day by day

8 Jul 2018 · 177 MW · 24 9 Jul 2018 · 582 MW · 30 10 Jul 2018 · 3,934 MW · 75 11 Jul 2018 · 105 MW · 9 12 Jul 2018 · 15 MW · 2 13 Jul 2018 · 616 MW · 39 14 Jul 2018 · 144 MW · 11 15 Jul 2018 · 317 MW · 30 16 Jul 2018 · 883 MW · 57 17 Jul 2018 · 949 MW · 35 18 Jul 2018 · 106 MW · 11
8 Jul 10 Jul 12 Jul 14 Jul 16 Jul 18 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

32°high
53km/h · peak gust
15%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

10% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 79 ha in 2016, 1,025 ha in 2017.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 6.7% of the area of London (107 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
    10,644 ha reached on 8 Jul
    0.2 %

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)
3 Jul 30.8 °C 31 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
4 Jul 30.5 °C 26 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
5 Jul 30.7 °C 20 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
6 Jul 28.9 °C 25 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
7 Jul 29.7 °C 23 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
8 Jul 29.9 °C 21 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
9 Jul 28.3 °C 20 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
10 Jul 28.5 °C 25 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
11 Jul 29.3 °C 19 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
12 Jul 28.3 °C 17 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
13 Jul 27.2 °C 15 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
14 Jul 28.3 °C 17 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
15 Jul 28.4 °C 17 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
16 Jul 28.9 °C 16 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
17 Jul 29.9 °C 19 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
18 Jul 30.0 °C 27 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
19 Jul after 31.5 °C 22 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
20 Jul after 31.3 °C 24 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
21 Jul after 31.2 °C 21 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
22 Jul after 29.7 °C 25 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
23 Jul after 29.5 °C 39 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
24 Jul after 28.8 °C 38 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
25 Jul after 29.9 °C 31 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
26 Jul after 30.5 °C 28 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
27 Jul after 29.9 °C 29 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
28 Jul after 29.3 °C 26 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
29 Jul after 28.8 °C 21 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
30 Jul after 28.8 °C 30 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
31 Jul after 28.6 °C 44 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
1 Aug after 27.6 °C 53 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
2 Aug after 27.4 °C 27 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
3 Aug after 24.7 °C 22 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
4 Aug after 28.1 °C 22 % 29 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 · 1 Jul 2018
After · 25 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 · 323Every 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 8 July 2018 and 18 July 2018: 11 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 10,656 hectares (106.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Broome (10,644 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 31.5 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 55, 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.

RSS Changes to this page

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. 323 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.