How long did the Broome fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 10 October 2018 and 14 October 2018: 5 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 5,322 hectares (53.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Broome (5,322 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.2 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 54, 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.

AU · Australia · 2018-10-10 → 2018-10-14

Broome fire, 10 October 2018 Broome

Out · last detection 14 Oct 2018, 05:29 UTC

The fire started on 10 October 2018 in Broome, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,322 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 2499th largest in Western Australia since 2016 (of 2718 with a page). Number 860 in Australia in 2018, of 923.

Compare with…

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

Burnt area: 5,322ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 5days; 10 Oct 2018 – 14 Oct 2018
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 10 Oct; 2018
Heat detections: 176; in a single hotspot: 172 MW
Danger at start: 44; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 909MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 10 Oct14 Oct

Play back 14 Oct 2018

How it evolved, day by day

10 Oct 11 Oct 12 Oct 13 Oct 14 Oct

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

The weather it burned in

37°high

47km/h · peak gust

23%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.4% of the area of London (53 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

Broome where it started

5,322 ha reached on 10 Oct

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)
10 Oct	35.5 °C	36 %	37 km/h	0.2 mm	Very high 44
11 Oct	33.3 °C	36 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
12 Oct	36.0 °C	36 %	33 km/h	0.9 mm	High 31
13 Oct	37.2 °C	23 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
14 Oct	36.0 °C	28 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
15 Oct after	36.8 °C	18 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
16 Oct after	38.1 °C	10 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 62
17 Oct after	40.2 °C	9 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 60
18 Oct after	36.3 °C	28 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
19 Oct after	36.3 °C	32 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
20 Oct after	35.3 °C	29 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
21 Oct after	38.5 °C	19 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
22 Oct after	38.8 °C	20 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
23 Oct after	38.0 °C	21 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
24 Oct after	37.6 °C	26 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 3 Oct 2018

After · 21 Oct 2018

Before After

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 · 176Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Australia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Broome fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 10 October 2018 and 14 October 2018: 5 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 5,322 hectares (53.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Broome (5,322 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.2 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 54, 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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.

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What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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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. 176 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.

Where it burned