How long did the Broome fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 23 July 2025 and 29 July 2025: 7 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 6,329 hectares (63.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Broome (6,391 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 29.2 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 58 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 53, 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 · 2025-07-23 → 2025-07-29

Broome fire, July 2025 Broome

Out · last detection 29 Jul 2025, 05:30 UTC

The fire started on 23 July 2025 in Broome, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,329 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1980th largest in Western Australia since 2016 (of 2718 with a page). Number 849 in Australia in 2025, of 1124.

Burnt area: 6,329ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 7days; 23 Jul 2025 – 29 Jul 2025
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 23 Jul; 2025
Heat detections: 185; in a single hotspot: 222 MW
Danger at start: 47; Very high · FWI index
Energy released: 5.8GW; sum of detected power

Play back 29 Jul 2025

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 23 Jul29 Jul

How it evolved, day by day

2326272829

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

The weather it burned in

29°high

58km/h · peak gust

24%lowest humidity

It had gone 40 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

64% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,052 ha in 2018, 543 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,028 ha that had burned before.

2,242 ha Broome fire, June 2018 6,151 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

What happened to each town

Broome where it started

6,391 ha reached on 23 Jul

0.1 %

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 Jul	29.2 °C	26 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
17 Jul	28.3 °C	24 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
18 Jul	29.2 °C	27 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
19 Jul	28.2 °C	29 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
20 Jul	26.7 °C	54 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
21 Jul	25.5 °C	48 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
22 Jul	26.3 °C	24 %	51 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
23 Jul	26.8 °C	29 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
24 Jul	25.7 °C	74 %	58 km/h	8.8 mm	Low 6
25 Jul	22.6 °C	36 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
26 Jul	22.9 °C	34 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
27 Jul	23.5 °C	40 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
28 Jul	23.2 °C	38 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
29 Jul	22.3 °C	25 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
30 Jul after	23.8 °C	19 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
31 Jul after	26.1 °C	15 %	57 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 62
1 Aug after	29.0 °C	20 %	59 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 62
2 Aug after	30.2 °C	21 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 55
3 Aug after	28.3 °C	28 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
4 Aug after	29.0 °C	43 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
5 Aug after	30.1 °C	29 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
6 Aug after	27.8 °C	26 %	38 km/h	0.1 mm	Very high 41
7 Aug after	30.8 °C	24 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 50
8 Aug after	32.8 °C	20 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 16 Jul 2025

After · 5 Aug 2025

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 27 July 2025 the air beside the fire reached 32 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 17: 1.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak32 µg/m³

Days over the guideline1 day

PM1034 µg/m³

Optical depth0.25

WHO 15

21222324252627282930311

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 · 185Every 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 23 July 2025 and 29 July 2025: 7 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 6,329 hectares (63.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Broome (6,391 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 29.2 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 58 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 53, 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