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Broome fire, 18 July 2018 Broome

Out · last detection 20 Jul 2018, 05:41 UTC

The fire started on 18 July 2018 in Broome, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,038 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 2697th largest in Western Australia since 2016 (of 2718 with a page). Number 917 in Australia in 2018, of 923.

Burnt area
5,038ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
3days
18 Jul 2018 – 20 Jul 2018
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
18 Jul
2018
Heat detections
134
in a single hotspot: 106 MW
Danger at start
51
Extreme · FWI index
Energy released
2.9GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

20 Jul 2018
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 18 Jul20 Jul

How it evolved, day by day

181920

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

The weather it burned in

33°high
41km/h · peak gust
14%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

2% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 97 ha in 2017.

What happened to each town

  1. Broome where it started
    5,089 ha reached on 18 Jul
    0.1 %

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)
18 Jul 30.4 °C 16 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
19 Jul 31.9 °C 17 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
20 Jul 33.2 °C 14 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
21 Jul after 31.6 °C 16 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
22 Jul after 28.0 °C 32 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
23 Jul after 27.6 °C 48 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
24 Jul after 28.1 °C 32 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
25 Jul after 28.5 °C 31 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
26 Jul after 26.5 °C 40 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
27 Jul after 28.2 °C 28 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
28 Jul after 28.3 °C 24 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
29 Jul after 29.0 °C 18 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
30 Jul after 29.5 °C 20 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 11 Jul 2018
After · 27 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 · 134Every 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 18 July 2018 and 20 July 2018: 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 5,038 hectares (50.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Broome (5,089 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.2 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 62, 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.

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.