Skip to content
worldfires
AU · Australia · →

Broome fire, 6 August 2018 Broome

Out · last detection 13 Aug 2018, 04:51 UTC

The fire started on 6 August 2018 in Broome, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,477 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1547th largest in Western Australia since 2016 (of 2718 with a page). Number 568 in Australia in 2018, of 923.

Burnt area
7,477ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
8days
6 Aug 2018 – 13 Aug 2018
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
6 Aug
2018
Heat detections
241
in a single hotspot: 79 MW
Danger at start
57
Extreme · FWI index
Energy released
2.0GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

13 Aug 2018
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Aug13 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

678910111213

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

The weather it burned in

30°high
62km/h · peak gust
13%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

38% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 519 ha in 2016, 2,460 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,812 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Broome where it started
    7,471 ha reached on 6 Aug
    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)
6 Aug 26.4 °C 17 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
7 Aug 29.1 °C 17 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
8 Aug 30.1 °C 13 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
9 Aug 30.4 °C 19 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
10 Aug 30.1 °C 17 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
11 Aug 26.0 °C 19 % 62 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 68
12 Aug 26.8 °C 15 % 59 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
13 Aug 27.4 °C 16 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
14 Aug after 28.7 °C 15 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
15 Aug after 29.0 °C 13 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
16 Aug after 30.0 °C 13 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
17 Aug after 29.5 °C 20 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
18 Aug after 31.4 °C 18 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
19 Aug after 33.0 °C 11 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
20 Aug after 31.5 °C 16 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
21 Aug after 30.4 °C 25 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
22 Aug after 31.1 °C 17 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
23 Aug after 29.9 °C 18 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 30 Jul 2018
After · 20 Aug 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 · 241Every 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 6 August 2018 and 13 August 2018: 8 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 7,477 hectares (74.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Broome (7,471 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 30.4 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 62 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 68, 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.