Skip to content
worldfires
AU · Australia · →

Cook fire, June 2016 Cook

Out · last detection 13 Jun 2016, 03:43 UTC

The fire started on 3 June 2016 in Cook, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,222 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1335th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 315 in Australia in 2016, of 427.

Burnt area
6,222ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
11days
3 Jun 2016 – 13 Jun 2016
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
3 Jun
2016
Heat detections
202
in a single hotspot: 125 MW
Danger at start
22
High · FWI index
Energy released
1.6GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

13 Jun 2016
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 3 Jun13 Jun

How it evolved, day by day

345678910111213

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
54km/h · peak gust
23%lowest humidity

It had gone 8 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

What happened to each town

  1. Cook where it started
    6,277 ha reached on 3 Jun
    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)
3 Jun 32.2 °C 44 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
4 Jun 31.1 °C 42 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
5 Jun 27.4 °C 25 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
6 Jun 28.4 °C 23 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
7 Jun 30.9 °C 37 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
8 Jun 31.9 °C 37 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
9 Jun 32.2 °C 38 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
10 Jun 32.7 °C 38 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
11 Jun 32.0 °C 38 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
12 Jun 30.8 °C 46 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
13 Jun 31.5 °C 41 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
14 Jun after 30.2 °C 49 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
15 Jun after 30.6 °C 45 % 60 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
16 Jun after 30.4 °C 47 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
17 Jun after 31.9 °C 42 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
18 Jun after 30.2 °C 54 % 50 km/h 0.7 mm High 24
19 Jun after 25.5 °C 70 % 37 km/h 0.4 mm Moderate 19
20 Jun after 31.1 °C 42 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
21 Jun after 30.3 °C 55 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
22 Jun after 31.8 °C 48 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
23 Jun after 31.1 °C 57 % 37 km/h 0.5 mm High 24

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 27 May 2016
After · 20 Jun 2016

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

Detections table · 202Every 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 Cook fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 3 June 2016 and 13 June 2016: 11 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 6,222 hectares (62.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Cook (6,277 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 32.7 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 36, class 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

Satellite cross-check

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.

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.