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Aurukun fire, 26 June 2026 Aurukun, Cook

Out · last detection 29 Jun 2026, 04:18 UTC

The fire started on 26 June 2026 in Aurukun, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,223 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 844th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1742 with a page). Number 389 in Australia in 2026, of 886.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Aurukun · 2023Aurukun · 2021Cook · 2026Cook · 2021

Burnt area
9,223ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
4days
26 Jun 2026 – 29 Jun 2026
Municipalities hit
2
local government areas
Started on
26 Jun
2026
Heat detections
188
in a single hotspot: 38 MW
Danger at start
32
High · FWI index
Average daily power
352MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 26 Jun29 Jun
29 Jun 2026

How it evolved, day by day

26 Jun 2026 · 655 MW · 75 27 Jun 2026 · 15 MW · 8 28 Jun 2026 · 124 MW · 25 29 Jun 2026 · 613 MW · 80
26 Jun 27 Jun 28 Jun 29 Jun

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

The weather it burned in

33°high
47km/h · peak gust
31%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

91% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 520 ha in 2016, 1,398 ha in 2017, 3,123 ha in 2018, 2,668 ha in 2019, 2,912 ha in 2020, 2,654 ha in 2021, 1,372 ha in 2022, 1,969 ha in 2023, 1,013 ha in 2024, 48 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 8,405 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 5.8% of the area of London (92 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. Aurukun where it started
    9,245 ha reached on 26 Jun
    1.2 %
  2. Cook
    49 ha
    0.0 %

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)
26 Jun 31.1 °C 39 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
27 Jun 29.7 °C 52 % 46 km/h 0.1 mm High 30
28 Jun 32.2 °C 37 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
29 Jun 30.0 °C 52 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
30 Jun after 30.2 °C 49 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
1 Jul after 31.7 °C 41 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
2 Jul after 33.0 °C 34 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
3 Jul after 32.2 °C 33 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
4 Jul after 32.1 °C 36 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
5 Jul after 31.8 °C 31 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
6 Jul after 31.8 °C 33 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
7 Jul after 30.0 °C 44 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
8 Jul after 31.5 °C 35 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
9 Jul after 30.9 °C 39 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
10 Jul after 31.9 °C 37 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
11 Jul after 31.9 °C 34 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
12 Jul after 31.3 °C 32 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
13 Jul after 30.8 °C 36 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
14 Jul after 32.4 °C 24 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
15 Jul after 31.9 °C 27 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
16 Jul after 30.1 °C 31 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 19 Jun 2026
After · 6 Jul 2026

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 25 June 2026 the air beside the fire reached 11 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak11 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1015 µg/m³
Optical depth0.18
24252627282930123456789
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 · 188Every 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 Aurukun fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 26 June 2026 and 29 June 2026: 4 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 9,223 hectares (92.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Aurukun (9,245 ha, 1.2 %); Cook (49 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.0 °C, humidity dropped to 31 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, class Very high.
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. 188 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.