Broome fire, October 2022 Broome
The fire started on 30 October 2022 in Broome, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 26,901 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 211th largest in Western Australia since 2016 (of 2718 with a page). Number 32 in Australia in 2022, of 566.
- Burnt area
- 26,901ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 9days
- 30 Oct 2022 – 7 Nov 2022
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- local government areas
- Started on
- 30 Oct
- 2022
- Heat detections
- 973
- in a single hotspot: 224 MW
- Danger at start
- 28
- High · FWI index
- Energy released
- 13.5GW
- sum of detected power
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 26 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 6.6 mm on 21 Nov.
This area had burned before
97% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,296 ha in 2016, 2,559 ha in 2017, 18,278 ha in 2018, 13,928 ha in 2019, 8,129 ha in 2020, 19,853 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 26,089 ha that had burned before.
- 10,886 ha Broome fire, September 2021 39,443 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 5,623 ha Broome fire, June 2019 8,047 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 4,457 ha Broome fire, August 2018 6,361 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,766 ha Broome fire, July 2018 5,071 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 746 ha Broome fire, May 2020 5,174 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 183 ha Broome fire, July 2019 7,799 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 67 ha Broome fire, October 2018 8,412 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 20 ha Broome fire, June 2019 5,056 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
What happened to each town
-
Broome where it started26,837 ha reached on 30 Oct0.5 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 30 Oct | 30.0 °C | 43 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 31 Oct | 31.9 °C | 30 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 1 Nov | 32.6 °C | 17 % | 63 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 62 |
| 2 Nov | 34.2 °C | 16 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 3 Nov | 35.4 °C | 20 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 4 Nov | 34.3 °C | 26 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 5 Nov | 31.5 °C | 48 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 6 Nov | 32.1 °C | 49 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 7 Nov | 31.6 °C | 53 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 8 Nov after | 32.7 °C | 48 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 9 Nov after | 32.5 °C | 49 % | 45 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 32 |
| 10 Nov after | 32.0 °C | 49 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 11 Nov after | 32.1 °C | 46 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 12 Nov after | 31.1 °C | 54 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 13 Nov after | 30.9 °C | 57 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 14 Nov after | 31.7 °C | 51 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 15 Nov after | 32.4 °C | 51 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 16 Nov after | 32.2 °C | 44 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 17 Nov after | 32.0 °C | 55 % | 40 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 29 |
| 18 Nov after | 31.4 °C | 57 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 19 Nov after | 31.6 °C | 53 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 20 Nov after | 32.2 °C | 48 % | 37 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 28 |
| 21 Nov after | 28.9 °C | 64 % | 26 km/h | 6.6 mm | Very low 4 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.
The smoke
CAMS · CopernicusOn 3 November 2022 the air beside the fire reached 1,494 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 331: 22 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.
Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)
Detections table · 973Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 23,045 haBroome20 September 2025 · 9 days · 9 km away
- 39,443 haBroome21 September 2021 · 30 days · 10 km away
- 22,582 haBroome7 August 2021 · 19 days · 29 km away
- 16,848 haBroomeSeptember 2022 · 9 days · 30 km away
- 19,595 haBroome28 September 2026 · 13 days · 37 km away
- 15,575 haBroome3 September 2025 · 14 days · 37 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Broome fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 30 October 2022 and 7 November 2022: 9 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 26,901 hectares (269.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Broome (26,837 ha, 0.5 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 35.4 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 63 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 62, 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
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.