Broome fire, 23 May 2023 Broome
The fire started on 23 May 2023 in Broome, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 50,409 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 76th largest in Western Australia since 2016 (of 2729 with a page). Number 90 in Australia in 2023, of 1235.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Broome · 2018Broome · 2018Broome · 2018Broome · 2025
- Burnt area
- 50,409ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 11days
- 23 May 2023 – 2 Jun 2023
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- local government areas
- Started on
- 23 May
- 2023
- Heat detections
- 1,954
- in a single hotspot: 193 MW
- Danger at start
- 57
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 2.0GW
- detected power per day, on average
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 37 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
38% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,103 ha in 2017, 17,083 ha in 2018, 1,192 ha in 2022.
- 3,918 ha Broome fire, April 2018 25,108 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,620 ha Broome fire, October 2018 18,196 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,456 ha Broome fire, October 2018 5,452 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Broome where it started50,858 ha reached on 23 May0.9 %
Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance runs from the point marking the centre of each area to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2025Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, satellite-based estimate).
This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.
Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 23 May | 28.4 °C | 13 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 24 May | 30.5 °C | 17 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 25 May | 30.3 °C | 14 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 26 May | 29.3 °C | 17 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 27 May | 29.9 °C | 22 % | 52 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 63 |
| 28 May | 26.9 °C | 14 % | 52 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 62 |
| 29 May | 27.4 °C | 13 % | 55 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 68 |
| 30 May | 28.4 °C | 13 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 60 |
| 31 May | 29.5 °C | 14 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 1 Jun | 30.1 °C | 15 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 2 Jun | 29.5 °C | 19 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 3 Jun after | 29.9 °C | 23 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 4 Jun after | 29.4 °C | 22 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 5 Jun after | 28.0 °C | 40 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 6 Jun after | 27.4 °C | 49 % | 34 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 32 |
| 7 Jun after | 28.6 °C | 32 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 8 Jun after | 29.8 °C | 27 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 9 Jun after | 31.7 °C | 22 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 10 Jun after | 32.7 °C | 25 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 11 Jun after | 31.9 °C | 25 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 12 Jun after | 30.4 °C | 33 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
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 24 May 2023 the air beside the fire reached 125 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 39: 2.6 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 · 1,954Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 25,108 haBroome13 April 2018 · 4 days · 16 km away
- 402,858 haBroome12 September 2025 · 23 days · 22 km away
- 18,196 haBroome17 October 2018 · 11 days · 24 km away
- 20,735 haBroome15 October 2023 · 7 days · 27 km away
- 14,183 haBroome27 September 2025 · 13 days · 32 km away
- 17,238 haBroome16 October 2023 · 6 days · 33 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Broome fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 23 May 2023 to 2 June 2023 (11 days). The perimeter dates it from 23 May 2023 to 1 June 2023.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 50,409 hectares (504.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Broome (50,858 ha, 0.9 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 30.5 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 55 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›
Satellite cross-check
History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 1 June 2023 → 2 June 2023.
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
How we know this
- Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 23 May 2023 to 1 June 2023. 1,954 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.
- Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
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.