Broome fire, October 2019 Broome
The fire started on 27 October 2019 in Broome, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 14,743 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 575th largest in Western Australia since 2016 (of 2728 with a page). Number 232 in Australia in 2019, of 802.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Broome · 2021Broome · 2024Broome · 2023Broome · 2024
- Burnt area
- 14,743ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 14days
- 27 Oct 2019 – 9 Nov 2019
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- local government areas
- Started on
- 27 Oct
- 2019
- Heat detections
- 432
- in a single hotspot: 276 MW
- Danger at start
- 32
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 732MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
2% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 210 ha in 2017, 42 ha in 2018.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
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 started14,783 ha reached on 27 Oct0.3 %
Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance runs from the point marking the centre of each area 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 27 Oct | 32.8 °C | 38 % | 38 km/h | 0.4 mm | High 32 |
| 28 Oct | 33.2 °C | 39 % | 35 km/h | 0.4 mm | High 33 |
| 29 Oct | 31.7 °C | 46 % | 37 km/h | 1.3 mm | High 24 |
| 30 Oct | 31.3 °C | 57 % | 35 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 24 |
| 31 Oct | 31.0 °C | 48 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 1 Nov | 31.1 °C | 55 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 2 Nov | 31.0 °C | 41 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 3 Nov | 35.8 °C | 19 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 4 Nov | 37.5 °C | 15 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 5 Nov | 37.7 °C | 18 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 68 |
| 6 Nov | 34.0 °C | 39 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 7 Nov | 35.9 °C | 21 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 8 Nov | 36.2 °C | 20 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 9 Nov | 36.3 °C | 26 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 10 Nov after | 35.7 °C | 23 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 11 Nov after | 32.5 °C | 47 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 12 Nov after | 32.9 °C | 44 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 13 Nov after | 33.8 °C | 46 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 14 Nov after | 36.5 °C | 33 % | 33 km/h | 0.3 mm | Very high 40 |
| 15 Nov after | 33.3 °C | 48 % | 31 km/h | 0.7 mm | High 29 |
| 16 Nov after | 34.7 °C | 41 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 17 Nov after | 36.0 °C | 28 % | 41 km/h | 0.1 mm | Very high 46 |
| 18 Nov after | 33.5 °C | 44 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 19 Nov after | 32.4 °C | 50 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · 432Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 34,511 haBroome17 November 2021 · 13 days · 6 km away
- 26,827 haBroome20 May 2024 · 7 days · 8 km away
- 16,747 haBroome22 November 2023 · 15 days · 17 km away
- 18,789 haBroome17 May 2024 · 12 days · 22 km away
- 14,230 haBroome4 May 2026 · 13 days · 28 km away
- 19,959 haBroome20 November 2021 · 12 days · 33 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Broome fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 27 October 2019 to 9 November 2019 (14 days). The perimeter dates it from 1 November 2019 to 7 November 2019.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 14,743 hectares (147.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Broome (14,783 ha, 0.3 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 37.7 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 50 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›
Satellite cross-check
History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 7 November 2019 → 9 November 2019.
- Start date: 1 November 2019 → 27 October 2019.
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
How we know this
- Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 1 November 2019 to 7 November 2019. 432 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.
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.