Broome fire, 16 May 2023 Broome
The fire started on 16 May 2023 in Broome, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,451 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 970th largest in Western Australia since 2016 (of 2718 with a page). Number 531 in Australia in 2023, of 1235.
- Burnt area
- 10,451ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 12days
- 16 May 2023 – 27 May 2023
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- local government areas
- Started on
- 16 May
- 2023
- Heat detections
- 405
- in a single hotspot: 270 MW
- Danger at start
- 57
- Extreme · FWI index
- Energy released
- 5.8GW
- 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 31 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
24% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 67 ha in 2017, 2,130 ha in 2018, 38 ha in 2019, 321 ha in 2020, 9 ha in 2022.
What happened to each town
-
Broome where it started10,568 ha reached on 16 May0.2 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 16 May | 32.2 °C | 17 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 17 May | 32.3 °C | 23 % | 51 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 60 |
| 18 May | 30.6 °C | 21 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 59 |
| 19 May | 29.0 °C | 17 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 20 May | 27.3 °C | 19 % | 54 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 64 |
| 21 May | 26.3 °C | 17 % | 57 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 68 |
| 22 May | 26.9 °C | 17 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 61 |
| 23 May | 28.8 °C | 15 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 24 May | 30.8 °C | 18 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 25 May | 30.5 °C | 16 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 26 May | 29.3 °C | 19 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 62 |
| 27 May | 30.1 °C | 23 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 61 |
| 28 May after | 26.8 °C | 17 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 59 |
| 29 May after | 27.5 °C | 16 % | 52 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 62 |
| 30 May after | 28.8 °C | 15 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 31 May after | 30.2 °C | 16 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 1 Jun after | 30.5 °C | 16 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 2 Jun after | 29.4 °C | 22 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 3 Jun after | 29.4 °C | 26 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 4 Jun after | 29.1 °C | 23 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 5 Jun after | 27.7 °C | 45 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 6 Jun after | 27.9 °C | 46 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 7 Jun after | 28.7 °C | 28 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 8 Jun after | 28.9 °C | 26 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 9 Jun after | 32.0 °C | 20 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
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 30 May 2023 the air beside the fire reached 45 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO 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 · 405Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 13,062 haBroome30 October 2017 · 2 days · 26 km away
- 11,828 haBroome9 June 2022 · 10 days · 32 km away
- 17,501 haBroome11 June 2017 · 11 days · 35 km away
- 17,983 haBroome21 October 2023 · 8 days · 37 km away
- 16,690 haBroomeSeptember 2018 · 6 days · 38 km away
- 14,183 haBroome27 September 2025 · 13 days · 40 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Broome fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 16 May 2023 and 27 May 2023: 12 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 10,451 hectares (104.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Broome (10,568 ha, 0.2 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 32.3 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 57 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 68, 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.