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Broome fire, 1 November 2019 Broome

Out · last detection 8 Nov 2019, 05:16 UTC

The fire started on 1 November 2019 in Broome, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 7 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 571th largest in Western Australia since 2016 (of 2718 with a page). Number 232 in Australia in 2019, of 802.

Burnt area
14,743ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
7days
1 Nov 2019 – 7 Nov 2019
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
1 Nov
2019
Heat detections
431
in a single hotspot: 276 MW
Danger at start
32
High · FWI index
Energy released
8.8GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

8 Nov 2019
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 1 Nov7 Nov

How it evolved, day by day

12345678

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
50km/h · peak gust
15%lowest humidity

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.

What happened to each town

  1. Broome where it started
    14,783 ha reached on 28 Oct
    0.3 %

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)
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 67
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 after 36.2 °C 20 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
9 Nov after 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 57
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 37
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.

Before · 25 Oct 2019
After · 14 Nov 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 · 431Every 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 1 November 2019 and 7 November 2019: 7 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 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 67, 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

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.