Skip to content
worldfires
en
AU · Australia · →

Broome fire, April 2019 Broome, Derby-West Kimberley

Out · last detection 15 May 2019, 05:35 UTC

The fire started on 30 April 2019 in Broome, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,414 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 1131th largest in Western Australia since 2016 (of 2718 with a page). Number 400 in Australia in 2019, of 802.

Burnt area
9,414ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
16days
30 Apr 2019 – 15 May 2019
Municipalities hit
2
local government areas
Started on
30 Apr
2019
Heat detections
396
in a single hotspot: 50 MW
Danger at start
50
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
120MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

15 May 2019
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 30 Apr15 May

How it evolved, day by day

30 Apr 2019 · 289 MW · 27 1 May 2019 · 23 MW · 4 2 May 2019 · 54 MW · 10 3 May 2019 · 273 MW · 66 4 May 2019 · 35 MW · 11 5 May 2019 · 215 MW · 30 6 May 2019 · 116 MW · 30 7 May 2019 · 68 MW · 19 8 May 2019 · 45 MW · 26 9 May 2019 · 197 MW · 48 10 May 2019 · 92 MW · 24 11 May 2019 · 177 MW · 42 12 May 2019 · 144 MW · 21 13 May 2019 · 131 MW · 21 14 May 2019 · 45 MW · 13 15 May 2019 · 17 MW · 4
30 Apr 3 May 6 May 9 May 12 May 15 May

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
64km/h · peak gust
9%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

42% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 964 ha in 2016, 2,795 ha in 2017, 328 ha in 2018.

What happened to each town

  1. Broome where it started
    7,814 ha reached on 30 Apr
    0.1 %
  2. Derby-West Kimberley
    1,618 ha reached on 30 Apr
    0.0 %

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)
23 Apr 36.8 °C 16 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
24 Apr 37.0 °C 12 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
25 Apr 36.4 °C 14 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
26 Apr 34.8 °C 14 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
27 Apr 33.7 °C 19 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
28 Apr 33.9 °C 23 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
29 Apr 31.8 °C 43 % 27 km/h 1.0 mm High 23
30 Apr 33.6 °C 34 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
1 May 34.7 °C 28 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
2 May 35.8 °C 19 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
3 May 37.0 °C 14 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
4 May 37.3 °C 16 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
5 May 36.0 °C 22 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
6 May 35.1 °C 17 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
7 May 35.0 °C 10 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 70
8 May 34.4 °C 9 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
9 May 33.6 °C 10 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 78
10 May 30.5 °C 13 % 64 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 87
11 May 29.6 °C 11 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 77
12 May 30.1 °C 11 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
13 May 31.8 °C 15 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
14 May 33.9 °C 16 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
15 May 34.1 °C 23 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
16 May after 34.7 °C 15 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
17 May after 35.6 °C 15 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
18 May after 36.1 °C 10 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
19 May after 36.7 °C 16 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
20 May after 34.9 °C 31 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
21 May after 35.3 °C 31 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
22 May after 35.9 °C 26 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
23 May after 35.3 °C 15 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
24 May after 34.1 °C 17 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
25 May after 34.0 °C 18 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 23 Apr 2019
After · 22 May 2019

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 · 396Every 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 30 April 2019 and 15 May 2019: 16 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 9,414 hectares (94.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Broome (7,814 ha, 0.1 %); Derby-West Kimberley (1,618 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.3 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 64 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 87, class Very 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. 396 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.