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Broome fire, July 2022 Broome

Out · last detection 17 Jul 2022, 05:04 UTC

The fire started on 7 July 2022 in Broome, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 11,634 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 832th largest in Western Australia since 2016 (of 2718 with a page). Number 155 in Australia in 2022, of 566.

Burnt area
11,634ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
11days
7 Jul 2022 – 17 Jul 2022
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
7 Jul
2022
Heat detections
562
in a single hotspot: 258 MW
Danger at start
51
Extreme · FWI index
Energy released
5.6GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

17 Jul 2022
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 7 Jul17 Jul

How it evolved, day by day

7891011121314151617

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

The weather it burned in

30°high
50km/h · peak gust
9%lowest humidity

It had gone 35 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

60% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,404 ha in 2016, 3,640 ha in 2017, 3,673 ha in 2018, 7 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 7,012 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Broome where it started
    11,693 ha reached on 7 Jul
    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)
7 Jul 27.0 °C 14 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
8 Jul 27.3 °C 10 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
9 Jul 27.3 °C 9 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
10 Jul 27.9 °C 13 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
11 Jul 28.2 °C 13 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
12 Jul 28.1 °C 10 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
13 Jul 27.0 °C 9 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
14 Jul 27.0 °C 12 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
15 Jul 28.2 °C 12 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
16 Jul 29.2 °C 13 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
17 Jul 30.0 °C 12 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
18 Jul after 29.8 °C 19 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
19 Jul after 30.6 °C 17 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
20 Jul after 32.0 °C 11 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
21 Jul after 32.7 °C 12 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
22 Jul after 31.5 °C 15 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
23 Jul after 30.7 °C 20 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
24 Jul after 29.6 °C 34 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
25 Jul after 31.4 °C 20 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
26 Jul after 33.1 °C 13 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
27 Jul after 32.3 °C 14 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 30 Jun 2022
After · 24 Jul 2022

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 · 562Every 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 7 July 2022 and 17 July 2022: 11 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 11,634 hectares (116.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Broome (11,693 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 30.0 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 50 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

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.