Broome fire, 3 November 2022 Broome
The fire started on 3 November 2022 in Broome, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 14,121 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 612th largest in Western Australia since 2016 (of 2718 with a page). Number 119 in Australia in 2022, of 566.
- Burnt area
- 14,121ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 10days
- 3 Nov 2022 – 12 Nov 2022
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- local government areas
- Started on
- 3 Nov
- 2022
- Heat detections
- 473
- in a single hotspot: 383 MW
- Danger at start
- 45
- Very high · FWI index
- Energy released
- 13.1GW
- 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 29 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.1 mm on 21 Nov.
This area had burned before
85% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 160 ha in 2016, 1,119 ha in 2017, 6,248 ha in 2018, 4,171 ha in 2019, 1,057 ha in 2020, 7,395 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 12,051 ha that had burned before.
- 2,931 ha Broome fire, August 2021 22,582 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,683 ha Broome fire, July 2018 10,656 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,155 ha Broome fire, July 2019 7,799 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,163 ha Broome fire, October 2018 6,461 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 277 ha Broome fire, August 2021 8,454 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 261 ha Broome fire, May 2020 11,356 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
What happened to each town
-
Broome where it started14,104 ha reached on 3 Nov0.3 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 31 Oct | 35.0 °C | 19 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 1 Nov | 34.0 °C | 11 % | 60 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 72 |
| 2 Nov | 37.0 °C | 9 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 63 |
| 3 Nov | 39.2 °C | 12 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 61 |
| 4 Nov | 39.3 °C | 15 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 64 |
| 5 Nov | 35.4 °C | 31 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 6 Nov | 36.0 °C | 34 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 7 Nov | 35.3 °C | 34 % | 35 km/h | 0.3 mm | Very high 42 |
| 8 Nov | 36.0 °C | 35 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 9 Nov | 36.0 °C | 35 % | 43 km/h | 1.0 mm | High 36 |
| 10 Nov | 35.7 °C | 35 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 11 Nov | 36.1 °C | 31 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 12 Nov | 35.0 °C | 39 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 13 Nov after | 34.4 °C | 42 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 14 Nov after | 35.6 °C | 36 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 15 Nov after | 36.4 °C | 37 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 16 Nov after | 35.5 °C | 32 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 17 Nov after | 34.6 °C | 44 % | 43 km/h | 0.9 mm | High 29 |
| 18 Nov after | 33.5 °C | 46 % | 43 km/h | 0.5 mm | High 32 |
| 19 Nov after | 34.7 °C | 42 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 20 Nov after | 35.4 °C | 35 % | 36 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 36 |
| 21 Nov after | 29.6 °C | 62 % | 26 km/h | 4.1 mm | Low 6 |
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 557 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 121: 8.1 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 · 473Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 39,443 haBroome21 September 2021 · 30 days · 16 km away
- 26,901 haBroomeOctober 2022 · 9 days · 16 km away
- 23,045 haBroome20 September 2025 · 9 days · 16 km away
- 22,582 haBroome7 August 2021 · 19 days · 22 km away
- 19,595 haBroome28 September 2026 · 13 days · 35 km away
- 48,416 haDerby-West Kimberley12 August 2021 · 14 days · 38 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Broome fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 3 November 2022 and 12 November 2022: 10 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 14,121 hectares (141.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Broome (14,104 ha, 0.3 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 39.3 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 60 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 72, class Very 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.