How long did the Cook fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 31 July 2016 to 13 August 2016 (14 days). The perimeter dates it from 1 August 2016 to 11 August 2016.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,364 hectares (53.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Cook (5,410 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 29.5 °C, humidity dropped to 40 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 31, 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.

AU · Australia · 2016-07-31 → 2016-08-13

Cook fire, 31 July 2016 Cook

Out · last detection 13 Aug 2016, 04:39 UTC

The fire started on 31 July 2016 in Cook, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,364 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1587th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1742 with a page). Number 378 in Australia in 2016, of 427.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Cook · 2021 Cook · 2023 Cook · 2019 Cook · 2019

Burnt area: 5,364ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 14days; 31 Jul 2016 – 13 Aug 2016
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 31 Jul; 2016
Heat detections: 164; in a single hotspot: 30 MW
Danger at start: 21; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 80MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 31 Jul13 Aug

Play back 13 Aug 2016

How it evolved, day by day

1 Aug 4 Aug 6 Aug 8 Aug 11 Aug 13 Aug

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

The weather it burned in

30°high

47km/h · peak gust

40%lowest humidity

It had gone 3 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.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.4% of the area of London (54 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

Cook where it started

5,410 ha reached on 1 Aug

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.

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)
1 Aug	27.8 °C	61 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
2 Aug	29.4 °C	55 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
3 Aug	29.5 °C	46 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
4 Aug	27.5 °C	51 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
5 Aug	27.1 °C	40 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
6 Aug	28.0 °C	48 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
7 Aug	28.0 °C	46 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
8 Aug	28.2 °C	49 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
9 Aug	26.2 °C	58 %	44 km/h	0.4 mm	High 26
10 Aug	26.9 °C	53 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
11 Aug	28.5 °C	48 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
12 Aug	28.1 °C	51 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
13 Aug	28.2 °C	48 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
14 Aug after	27.5 °C	52 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
15 Aug after	26.5 °C	61 %	45 km/h	0.3 mm	High 26
16 Aug after	25.1 °C	68 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
17 Aug after	25.5 °C	68 %	46 km/h	0.7 mm	Moderate 18
18 Aug after	26.7 °C	56 %	46 km/h	0.1 mm	High 22
19 Aug after	26.5 °C	54 %	39 km/h	0.2 mm	Moderate 21
20 Aug after	27.2 °C	53 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
21 Aug after	27.5 °C	51 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 24 Jul 2016

After · 20 Aug 2016

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.

Detections table · 164Every 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 Cook fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 31 July 2016 to 13 August 2016 (14 days). The perimeter dates it from 1 August 2016 to 11 August 2016.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,364 hectares (53.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Cook (5,410 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 29.5 °C, humidity dropped to 40 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 31, 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

25 October 2026 Last day with fire: 11 August 2016 → 13 August 2016.
25 October 2026 Start date: 1 August 2016 → 31 July 2016.

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?

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.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 1 August 2016 to 11 August 2016. 164 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.

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