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Broome fire, 3 September 2025 Broome

Out · last detection 16 Sept 2025, 05:13 UTC

The fire started on 3 September 2025 in Broome, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 15,575 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 532th largest in Western Australia since 2016 (of 2728 with a page). Number 282 in Australia in 2025, of 1124.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Broome · 2018Broome · 2018Derby-West Kimberley · 2021Broome · 2023

Burnt area
15,575ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
14days
3 Sept 2025 – 16 Sept 2025
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
3 Sept
2025
Heat detections
271
in a single hotspot: 277 MW
Danger at start
58
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
389MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 3 Sept16 Sept
16 Sept 2025

How it evolved, day by day

3 Sept 2025 · 659 MW · 24 4 Sept 2025 · 574 MW · 29 5 Sept 2025 · 281 MW · 12 6 Sept 2025 · 51 MW · 1 7 Sept 2025 · 414 MW · 28 8 Sept 2025 · 72 MW · 14 9 Sept 2025 · 68 MW · 8 10 Sept 2025 · 807 MW · 30 11 Sept 2025 · 2,040 MW · 74 12 Sept 2025 · 43 MW · 8 14 Sept 2025 · 17 MW · 5 15 Sept 2025 · 23 MW · 1 16 Sept 2025 · 10 MW · 1
3 Sept 5 Sept 7 Sept 9 Sept 11 Sept 14 Sept 16 Sept

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
54km/h · peak gust
11%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

96% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 798 ha in 2017, 7,895 ha in 2018, 2,124 ha in 2019, 9,045 ha in 2020, 2,945 ha in 2021, 3,245 ha in 2022, 961 ha in 2023, 1,062 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 14,881 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 9.8% of the area of London (156 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

  1. Broome where it started
    15,574 ha reached on 1 Sept
    0.3 %

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 2025
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside 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)
27 Aug 29.7 °C 16 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
28 Aug 31.6 °C 12 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
29 Aug 31.8 °C 11 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 70
30 Aug 33.8 °C 13 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
31 Aug 34.3 °C 21 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
1 Sept 33.3 °C 31 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
2 Sept 33.8 °C 24 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
3 Sept 35.0 °C 13 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
4 Sept 33.5 °C 12 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
5 Sept 34.3 °C 19 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
6 Sept 34.1 °C 20 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
7 Sept 32.7 °C 29 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
8 Sept 33.5 °C 35 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
9 Sept 35.5 °C 29 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
10 Sept 35.1 °C 17 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
11 Sept 35.2 °C 13 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 68
12 Sept 35.7 °C 21 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
13 Sept 32.1 °C 38 % 36 km/h 0.4 mm High 37
14 Sept 33.9 °C 19 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
15 Sept 34.3 °C 26 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
16 Sept 34.4 °C 25 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
17 Sept after 34.6 °C 25 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
18 Sept after 35.3 °C 25 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
19 Sept after 36.4 °C 25 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
20 Sept after 37.9 °C 16 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
21 Sept after 39.2 °C 17 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
22 Sept after 37.4 °C 19 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
23 Sept after 34.8 °C 11 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 72
24 Sept after 34.7 °C 12 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 71
25 Sept after 35.8 °C 14 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
26 Sept after 37.1 °C 12 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
27 Sept after 36.9 °C 11 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
28 Sept after 36.4 °C 22 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
29 Sept after 37.0 °C 17 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
30 Sept after 37.9 °C 17 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
1 Oct after 37.8 °C 12 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
2 Oct after 39.4 °C 12 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 27 Aug 2025
After · 23 Sept 2025

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 12 September 2025 the air beside the fire reached 72 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 30: 2.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak72 µg/m³
Days over the guideline5 days
PM1073 µg/m³
Optical depth1.16
12345678910111213141516171819
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 · 271Every 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 timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Australia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Broome fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 3 September 2025 and 16 September 2025: 14 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 15,575 hectares (155.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Broome (15,574 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.2 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 70, class Very 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.

RSS Changes to this page

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
What do you think is wrong?

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.

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. 271 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.

How we build fire pages: methodology ›

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.