Broome fire, May 2025 Broome
The fire started on 13 May 2025 in Broome, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 12,150 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 787th largest in Western Australia since 2016 (of 2718 with a page). Number 389 in Australia in 2025, of 1124.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Broome · 2021Broome · 2024Broome · 2019Broome · 2024
- Burnt area
- 12,150ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 10days
- 13 May 2025 – 22 May 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- local government areas
- Started on
- 13 May
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 407
- in a single hotspot: 145 MW
- Danger at start
- 37
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 578MW
- 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 20 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 34.0 mm on 26 May.
This area had burned before
84% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,667 ha in 2019, 7,432 ha in 2021, 1,804 ha in 2022, 3,183 ha in 2023, 1,063 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 10,182 ha that had burned before.
- 1,980 ha Broome fire, November 2021 34,511 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 426 ha Broome fire, May 2024 18,789 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 78 ha Broome fire, November 2019 14,743 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 started12,178 ha reached on 13 May0.2 %
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.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 13 May | 32.5 °C | 34 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 14 May | 32.0 °C | 46 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 15 May | 31.7 °C | 28 % | 52 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 16 May | 30.8 °C | 26 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 17 May | 30.0 °C | 21 % | 52 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 18 May | 29.3 °C | 20 % | 52 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 19 May | 28.4 °C | 23 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 20 May | 28.3 °C | 23 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 21 May | 28.1 °C | 23 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 22 May | 29.0 °C | 26 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 23 May after | 28.8 °C | 43 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 24 May after | 28.3 °C | 57 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 21 |
| 25 May after | 27.2 °C | 65 % | 30 km/h | 0.8 mm | Moderate 15 |
| 26 May after | 23.4 °C | 77 % | 41 km/h | 34.0 mm | Very low 0 |
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 14 May 2025 the air beside the fire reached 50 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 21: 1.4 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 · 407Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Broome fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 13 May 2025 and 22 May 2025: 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 12,150 hectares (121.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Broome (12,178 ha, 0.2 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 32.5 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 51, 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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
No changes since 24 October 2026.
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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 407 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.
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.