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Broome fire, December 2021 Broome

Out · last detection 18 Dec 2021, 06:01 UTC

The fire started on 5 December 2021 in Broome, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,439 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1927th largest in Western Australia since 2016 (of 2718 with a page). Number 318 in Australia in 2021, of 460.

Burnt area
6,439ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
13days
5 Dec 2021 – 17 Dec 2021
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
5 Dec
2021
Heat detections
212
in a single hotspot: 146 MW
Danger at start
28
High · FWI index
Energy released
4.8GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

18 Dec 2021
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Dec17 Dec

How it evolved, day by day

56781112131415161718

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

The weather it burned in

35°high
47km/h · peak gust
41%lowest humidity

It had gone 6 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.2 mm on 24 Dec.

This area had burned before

56% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 894 ha in 2016, 58 ha in 2017, 2,165 ha in 2018, 958 ha in 2019, 128 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,611 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Broome where it started
    6,439 ha reached on 5 Dec
    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)
5 Dec 34.3 °C 51 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
6 Dec 34.1 °C 53 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
7 Dec 33.4 °C 53 % 37 km/h 0.4 mm High 26
8 Dec 33.9 °C 54 % 38 km/h 0.1 mm High 27
9 Dec 33.6 °C 52 % 31 km/h 2.1 mm Moderate 12
10 Dec 33.7 °C 54 % 40 km/h 2.1 mm Moderate 13
11 Dec 34.0 °C 55 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
12 Dec 34.0 °C 51 % 34 km/h 1.1 mm Moderate 18
13 Dec 33.6 °C 53 % 34 km/h 0.6 mm Moderate 19
14 Dec 33.9 °C 51 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 21
15 Dec 34.5 °C 43 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
16 Dec 34.3 °C 41 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
17 Dec 34.9 °C 43 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
18 Dec after 35.2 °C 45 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
19 Dec after 33.9 °C 51 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
20 Dec after 33.8 °C 53 % 38 km/h 0.3 mm High 28
21 Dec after 34.1 °C 53 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
22 Dec after 33.3 °C 53 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
23 Dec after 32.5 °C 56 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
24 Dec after 33.2 °C 54 % 27 km/h 1.2 mm Moderate 16

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 28 Nov 2021
After · 24 Dec 2021

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 · 212Every 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 5 December 2021 and 17 December 2021: 13 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 6,439 hectares (64.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Broome (6,439 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.2 °C, humidity dropped to 41 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 33, class 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
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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.

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.