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Broome fire, 2 May 2019 Broome

Out · last detection 10 May 2019, 05:28 UTC

The fire started on 2 May 2019 in Broome, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,528 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1537th largest in Western Australia since 2016 (of 2718 with a page). Number 511 in Australia in 2019, of 802.

Burnt area
7,528ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
9days
2 May 2019 – 10 May 2019
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
2 May
2019
Heat detections
212
in a single hotspot: 60 MW
Danger at start
58
Extreme · FWI index
Energy released
1.4GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

10 May 2019
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 2 May10 May

How it evolved, day by day

2345678910

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

The weather it burned in

38°high
67km/h · peak gust
8%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

9% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 36 ha in 2016, 106 ha in 2017, 608 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 714 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Broome where it started
    7,552 ha reached on 2 May
    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)
2 May 36.7 °C 15 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
3 May 37.7 °C 13 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
4 May 37.7 °C 15 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
5 May 36.6 °C 20 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
6 May 35.8 °C 16 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
7 May 35.5 °C 10 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 73
8 May 34.7 °C 8 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 69
9 May 33.9 °C 10 % 59 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 83
10 May 30.6 °C 13 % 67 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 91
11 May after 29.8 °C 11 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 80
12 May after 30.5 °C 10 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
13 May after 32.4 °C 14 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
14 May after 34.5 °C 15 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
15 May after 35.1 °C 20 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
16 May after 35.3 °C 14 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
17 May after 36.1 °C 15 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
18 May after 36.5 °C 9 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
19 May after 37.0 °C 15 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
20 May after 35.7 °C 28 % 35 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 · 25 Apr 2019
After · 17 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 · 212Every 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 2 May 2019 and 10 May 2019: 9 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 7,528 hectares (75.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Broome (7,552 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.7 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 67 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 91, 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.

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.