How long did the Broome fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 17 November 2021 to 29 November 2021 (13 days). The perimeter dates it from 22 November 2021 to 29 November 2021.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 34,511 hectares (345.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Broome (34,594 ha, 0.6 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 39.5 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 65, 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.

AU · Australia · 2021-11-17 → 2021-11-29

Broome fire, 17 November 2021 Broome

Out · last detection 29 Nov 2021, 05:18 UTC

The fire started on 17 November 2021 in Broome, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 34,511 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 143th largest in Western Australia since 2016 (of 2732 with a page). Number 30 in Australia in 2021, of 460.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Broome · 2019 Broome · 2017 Broome · 2024 Broome · 2019

Burnt area: 34,511ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 13days; 17 Nov 2021 – 29 Nov 2021
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 17 Nov; 2021
Heat detections: 1,164; in a single hotspot: 187 MW
Danger at start: 35; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 1.6GW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 17 Nov29 Nov

Play back 29 Nov 2021

How it evolved, day by day

17 Nov 19 Nov 21 Nov 23 Nov 25 Nov 26 Nov 27 Nov 29 Nov

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

The weather it burned in

40°high

49km/h · peak gust

13%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.8 mm on 9 Dec.

This area had burned before

51% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,538 ha in 2017, 348 ha in 2018, 17,280 ha in 2019, 1,042 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 17,743 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 22% of the area of London (345 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

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 started

34,594 ha reached on 17 Nov

0.6 %

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.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2020

Built-up area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, satellite-based estimate).

This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned.

Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu

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)
17 Nov	36.0 °C	36 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
18 Nov	35.5 °C	37 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
19 Nov	35.9 °C	32 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
20 Nov	36.8 °C	27 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
21 Nov	35.4 °C	30 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
22 Nov	36.3 °C	32 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
23 Nov	36.4 °C	30 %	40 km/h	0.3 mm	Very high 44
24 Nov	39.5 °C	20 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
25 Nov	37.9 °C	13 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 64
26 Nov	39.3 °C	13 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 65
27 Nov	37.8 °C	22 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 50
28 Nov	35.4 °C	35 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
29 Nov	36.0 °C	33 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
30 Nov after	36.2 °C	30 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
1 Dec after	36.7 °C	30 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
2 Dec after	36.6 °C	33 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
3 Dec after	37.2 °C	32 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
4 Dec after	38.4 °C	30 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
5 Dec after	37.3 °C	38 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
6 Dec after	36.4 °C	43 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
7 Dec after	36.6 °C	38 %	36 km/h	0.6 mm	High 33
8 Dec after	36.1 °C	45 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
9 Dec after	35.5 °C	43 %	37 km/h	1.8 mm	Moderate 21

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 10 Nov 2021

After · 6 Dec 2021

Before After

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 · 1,164Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Australia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Broome fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 17 November 2021 to 29 November 2021 (13 days). The perimeter dates it from 22 November 2021 to 29 November 2021.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 34,511 hectares (345.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Broome (34,594 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 39.5 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 65, 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

26 October 2026 Start date: 22 November 2021 → 17 November 2021.

RSS Changes to this page

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.

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What really happened?

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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.

How we know this

Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 22 November 2021 to 29 November 2021. 1,164 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.
Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2020, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

How we build fire pages: methodology ›

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.

Where it burned