Skip to content
worldfires
AU · Australia · →

Cook fire, 8 October 2016 Cook

Out · last detection 19 Oct 2016, 03:43 UTC

The fire started on 8 October 2016 in Cook, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 21,583 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 290th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 55 in Australia in 2016, of 427.

Burnt area
21,583ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
12days
8 Oct 2016 – 19 Oct 2016
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
8 Oct
2016
Heat detections
706
in a single hotspot: 224 MW
Danger at start
44
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
7.5GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

19 Oct 2016
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 8 Oct19 Oct

How it evolved, day by day

810111213141516171819

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

The weather it burned in

35°high
71km/h · peak gust
29%lowest humidity

It had gone 19 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.4 mm on 20 Oct.

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
    21,595 ha reached on 6 Oct
    0.2 %

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)
6 Oct 34.2 °C 40 % 71 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
7 Oct 32.6 °C 40 % 63 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
8 Oct 33.2 °C 39 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
9 Oct 31.7 °C 52 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
10 Oct 33.9 °C 37 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
11 Oct 35.0 °C 29 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
12 Oct 35.1 °C 30 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
13 Oct 34.4 °C 35 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
14 Oct 34.3 °C 35 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
15 Oct 33.4 °C 38 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
16 Oct 33.6 °C 37 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
17 Oct 34.0 °C 37 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
18 Oct 34.8 °C 32 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
19 Oct 34.3 °C 38 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
20 Oct after 33.0 °C 48 % 56 km/h 1.4 mm High 25

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 1 Oct 2016
After · 26 Oct 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 · 706Every 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 8 October 2016 and 19 October 2016: 12 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 21,583 hectares (215.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Cook (21,595 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.1 °C, humidity dropped to 29 % and gusts hit 71 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

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.