How long did the Broome fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 7 October 2023 and 16 October 2023: 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 8,237 hectares (82.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Broome (8,238 ha, 0.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 38.8 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 64, 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.

AU · Australia · 2023-10-07 → 2023-10-16

Broome fire, 7 October 2023 Broome

Out · last detection 16 Oct 2023, 05:54 UTC

The fire started on 7 October 2023 in Broome, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,237 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1357th largest in Western Australia since 2016 (of 2718 with a page). Number 708 in Australia in 2023, of 1235.

Burnt area: 8,237ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 10days; 7 Oct 2023 – 16 Oct 2023
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 7 Oct; 2023
Heat detections: 218; in a single hotspot: 102 MW
Danger at start: 36; High · FWI index
Energy released: 2.7GW; sum of detected power

Play back 16 Oct 2023

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 7 Oct16 Oct

How it evolved, day by day

789101112141516

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

The weather it burned in

39°high

51km/h · peak gust

11%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.4 mm on 26 Oct.

This area had burned before

83% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 789 ha in 2017, 980 ha in 2018, 2,078 ha in 2019, 3,918 ha in 2020, 962 ha in 2021, 3,005 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,850 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

Broome where it started

8,238 ha reached on 6 Oct

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)
6 Oct	34.9 °C	13 %	39 km/h	2.5 mm	High 36
7 Oct	35.3 °C	30 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
8 Oct	36.4 °C	12 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 59
9 Oct	37.1 °C	11 %	51 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 64
10 Oct	37.5 °C	12 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 60
11 Oct	37.8 °C	17 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 57
12 Oct	36.9 °C	23 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
13 Oct	38.1 °C	23 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
14 Oct	36.3 °C	26 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
15 Oct	38.1 °C	17 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
16 Oct	38.8 °C	12 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
17 Oct after	37.1 °C	13 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
18 Oct after	38.5 °C	13 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 57
19 Oct after	38.1 °C	10 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
20 Oct after	38.3 °C	17 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
21 Oct after	36.8 °C	38 %	35 km/h	0.7 mm	High 34
22 Oct after	35.9 °C	26 %	36 km/h	0.1 mm	Very high 42
23 Oct after	35.1 °C	38 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
24 Oct after	36.5 °C	32 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
25 Oct after	37.6 °C	23 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
26 Oct after	37.3 °C	37 %	25 km/h	1.4 mm	High 25

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 30 Sept 2023

After · 23 Oct 2023

Before After

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 · Copernicus

On 17 October 2023 the air beside the fire reached 59 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 32: 2.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak59 µg/m³

Days over the guideline11 days

PM1085 µg/m³

Optical depth1.07

WHO 15

5678910111213141516171819

Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

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 · 218Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Australia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Broome fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 7 October 2023 and 16 October 2023: 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 8,237 hectares (82.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Broome (8,238 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 38.8 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 64, 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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.

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What really happened?

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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.

Where it burned