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Broome fire, 24 June 2019 Broome

Out · last detection 3 Jul 2019, 05:16 UTC

The fire started on 24 June 2019 in Broome, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,056 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 2683th largest in Western Australia since 2016 (of 2718 with a page). Number 793 in Australia in 2019, of 802.

Burnt area
5,056ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
10days
24 Jun 2019 – 3 Jul 2019
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
24 Jun
2019
Heat detections
182
in a single hotspot: 113 MW
Danger at start
37
High · FWI index
Energy released
3.0GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

3 Jul 2019
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 24 Jun3 Jul

How it evolved, day by day

24252627282930123

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

The weather it burned in

29°high
44km/h · peak gust
22%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

78% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,203 ha in 2017, 76 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,925 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Broome where it started
    5,043 ha reached on 24 Jun
    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)
24 Jun 27.6 °C 36 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
25 Jun 27.9 °C 24 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
26 Jun 27.7 °C 26 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
27 Jun 27.4 °C 37 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
28 Jun 27.4 °C 37 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
29 Jun 28.4 °C 22 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
30 Jun 29.0 °C 28 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
1 Jul 29.4 °C 30 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
2 Jul 28.1 °C 38 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
3 Jul 27.9 °C 34 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
4 Jul after 27.0 °C 54 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
5 Jul after 26.7 °C 47 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
6 Jul after 27.5 °C 36 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
7 Jul after 27.9 °C 37 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
8 Jul after 28.1 °C 29 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
9 Jul after 28.3 °C 30 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
10 Jul after 28.4 °C 33 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
11 Jul after 28.5 °C 27 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
12 Jul after 28.2 °C 25 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
13 Jul after 29.3 °C 23 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 17 Jun 2019
After · 10 Jul 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 · 182Every 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 24 June 2019 and 3 July 2019: 10 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 5,056 hectares (50.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Broome (5,043 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 29.4 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 49, class Very high.
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.