How long did the Broome fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 27 September 2025 and 9 October 2025: 13 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 14,183 hectares (141.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Broome (14,330 ha, 0.3 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 40.4 °C, humidity dropped to 6 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 82, 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.

AU · Australia · 2025-09-27 → 2025-10-09

Broome fire, 27 September 2025 Broome

Out · last detection 9 Oct 2025, 04:41 UTC

The fire started on 27 September 2025 in Broome, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 14,183 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 615th largest in Western Australia since 2016 (of 2736 with a page). Number 318 in Australia in 2025, of 1124.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Broome · 2023 Broome · 2023 Broome · 2017 Broome · 2023

Burnt area: 14,183ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 13days; 27 Sept 2025 – 9 Oct 2025
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 27 Sept; 2025
Heat detections: 292; in a single hotspot: 179 MW
Danger at start: 63; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 345MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 27 Sept9 Oct

Play back 9 Oct 2025

How it evolved, day by day

27 Sept 28 Sept 29 Sept 1 Oct 3 Oct 5 Oct 7 Oct 9 Oct

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

The weather it burned in

40°high

52km/h · peak gust

6%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.7 mm on 20 Oct.

This area had burned before

53% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,379 ha in 2016, 2,980 ha in 2017, 999 ha in 2018, 164 ha in 2021, 2,336 ha in 2022, 2,549 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 7,539 ha that had burned before.

253 ha Broome fire, October 2023 9,232 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 9% of the area of London (142 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

Broome where it started

14,330 ha reached on 27 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 Sept	36.4 °C	6 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 63
28 Sept	37.2 °C	9 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 68
29 Sept	37.0 °C	13 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 75
30 Sept	36.5 °C	16 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 78
1 Oct	37.1 °C	7 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 61
2 Oct	39.8 °C	9 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 78
3 Oct	39.5 °C	10 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 65
4 Oct	38.8 °C	14 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 71
5 Oct	40.4 °C	15 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 72
6 Oct	39.9 °C	16 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 66
7 Oct	40.4 °C	19 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 82
8 Oct	38.7 °C	24 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 59
9 Oct	38.7 °C	18 %	42 km/h	0.2 mm	Extreme 67
10 Oct after	36.9 °C	27 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
11 Oct after	38.1 °C	23 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
12 Oct after	39.5 °C	19 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 60
13 Oct after	39.4 °C	20 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 65
14 Oct after	38.3 °C	26 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
15 Oct after	38.8 °C	22 %	33 km/h	0.3 mm	Very high 48
16 Oct after	38.3 °C	25 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 55
17 Oct after	39.6 °C	23 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 61
18 Oct after	39.8 °C	21 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 61
19 Oct after	38.6 °C	28 %	34 km/h	0.1 mm	Extreme 56
20 Oct after	35.2 °C	35 %	39 km/h	1.7 mm	High 35

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 20 Sept 2025

After · 16 Oct 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 26 September 2025 the air beside the fire reached 90 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 46: 3.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak90 µg/m³

Days over the guideline5 days

PM1092 µg/m³

Optical depth1.26

WHO 15

252627282930123456789101112

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 · 292Every 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 27 September 2025 and 9 October 2025: 13 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 14,183 hectares (141.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Broome (14,330 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 40.4 °C, humidity dropped to 6 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 82, 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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.

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What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

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.

How we know this

Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 292 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.

Where it burned