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Cook fire, 14 November 2016 Cook

Out · last detection 26 Nov 2016, 03:30 UTC

The fire started on 14 November 2016 in Cook, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 12,646 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 575th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 112 in Australia in 2016, of 427.

Burnt area
12,646ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
13days
14 Nov 2016 – 26 Nov 2016
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
14 Nov
2016
Heat detections
503
in a single hotspot: 45 MW
Danger at start
9
Low · FWI index
Energy released
3.6GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

26 Nov 2016
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Nov26 Nov

How it evolved, day by day

14151617181920212223242526

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

The weather it burned in

38°high
52km/h · peak gust
25%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 8.8 mm on 29 Nov.

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
    12,711 ha reached on 14 Nov
    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)
14 Nov 37.5 °C 35 % 29 km/h 5.2 mm Low 9
15 Nov 34.8 °C 41 % 45 km/h 0.9 mm Moderate 20
16 Nov 35.1 °C 25 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
17 Nov 34.3 °C 33 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
18 Nov 33.7 °C 36 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
19 Nov 34.2 °C 33 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
20 Nov 34.1 °C 33 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
21 Nov 34.7 °C 36 % 41 km/h 0.1 mm High 33
22 Nov 34.6 °C 34 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
23 Nov 34.9 °C 35 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
24 Nov 36.9 °C 31 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
25 Nov 37.3 °C 27 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
26 Nov 36.5 °C 30 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
27 Nov after 36.2 °C 34 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
28 Nov after 35.6 °C 34 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
29 Nov after 35.8 °C 40 % 31 km/h 8.8 mm Low 6

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 7 Nov 2016
After · 3 Dec 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 · 503Every 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 14 November 2016 and 26 November 2016: 13 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 12,646 hectares (126.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Cook (12,711 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.5 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, 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.