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Broome fire, 6 October 2020 Broome

Out · last detection 12 Oct 2020, 06:00 UTC

The fire started on 6 October 2020 in Broome, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,725 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 931th largest in Western Australia since 2016 (of 2718 with a page). Number 101 in Australia in 2020, of 320.

Burnt area
10,725ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
7days
6 Oct 2020 – 12 Oct 2020
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
6 Oct
2020
Heat detections
325
in a single hotspot: 148 MW
Danger at start
52
Extreme · FWI index
Energy released
5.1GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

12 Oct 2020
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Oct12 Oct

How it evolved, day by day

6789101112

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

The weather it burned in

32°high
56km/h · peak gust
20%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

81% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,080 ha in 2017, 5,544 ha in 2018, 3,565 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 8,738 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Broome where it started
    10,720 ha reached on 4 Oct
    0.2 %

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)
4 Oct 32.2 °C 27 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
5 Oct 30.5 °C 24 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
6 Oct 30.4 °C 22 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
7 Oct 31.3 °C 20 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
8 Oct 32.4 °C 23 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
9 Oct 32.5 °C 27 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
10 Oct 31.2 °C 47 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
11 Oct 30.8 °C 57 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
12 Oct 31.1 °C 53 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
13 Oct after 30.4 °C 61 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
14 Oct after 30.1 °C 61 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
15 Oct after 30.8 °C 60 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
16 Oct after 28.9 °C 71 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
17 Oct after 29.8 °C 61 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
18 Oct after 28.9 °C 64 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
19 Oct after 30.0 °C 55 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
20 Oct after 30.2 °C 57 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
21 Oct after 30.5 °C 55 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
22 Oct after 29.6 °C 64 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 27

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 29 Sept 2020
After · 19 Oct 2020

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 · 325Every 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 6 October 2020 and 12 October 2020: 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 10,725 hectares (107.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Broome (10,720 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 32.5 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 56 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 59, 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.