How long did the Cook fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 14 October 2016 and 18 October 2016: 5 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 6,417 hectares (64.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Cook (6,418 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 35.8 °C, humidity dropped to 29 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, 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.

AU · Australia · 2016-10-14 → 2016-10-18

Cook fire, 14 October 2016 Cook

Out · last detection 19 Oct 2016, 16:31 UTC

The fire started on 14 October 2016 in Cook, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,417 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1292th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 295 in Australia in 2016, of 427.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Cook · 2026 Cook · 2018 Cook · 2023 Cook · 2018

Burnt area: 6,417ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 5days; 14 Oct 2016 – 18 Oct 2016
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 14 Oct; 2016
Heat detections: 222; in a single hotspot: 49 MW
Danger at start: 42; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 312MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Oct18 Oct

Play back 19 Oct 2016

How it evolved, day by day

14 Oct 15 Oct 16 Oct 17 Oct 18 Oct 19 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

36°high

55km/h · peak gust

29%lowest humidity

It had gone 27 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 4.1% of the area of London (64 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

6,418 ha reached on 14 Oct

0.1 %

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)
14 Oct	35.3 °C	31 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
15 Oct	34.6 °C	34 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
16 Oct	34.6 °C	34 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
17 Oct	35.3 °C	32 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
18 Oct	35.8 °C	29 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
19 Oct after	35.4 °C	33 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
20 Oct after	33.9 °C	44 %	55 km/h	0.7 mm	High 33
21 Oct after	34.7 °C	34 %	55 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
22 Oct after	34.5 °C	37 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
23 Oct after	34.9 °C	35 %	40 km/h	0.6 mm	High 32
24 Oct after	34.0 °C	39 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
25 Oct after	33.9 °C	40 %	57 km/h	0.1 mm	Very high 39
26 Oct after	35.9 °C	31 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
27 Oct after	36.1 °C	32 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
28 Oct after	35.5 °C	35 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
29 Oct after	35.9 °C	32 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
30 Oct after	35.1 °C	32 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
31 Oct after	36.0 °C	31 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 7 Oct 2016

After · 25 Oct 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 · 222Every 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?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 14 October 2016 and 18 October 2016: 5 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 6,417 hectares (64.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Cook (6,418 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 35.8 °C, humidity dropped to 29 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, 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

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.
Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 222 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