How long did the Cook fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 14 November 2016 and 21 November 2016: 8 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 11,363 hectares (113.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Cook (11,514 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 39.2 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 61, class Extreme.

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 · 2016-11-14 → 2016-11-21

Cook fire, 14 November 2016 Cook

Out · last detection 21 Nov 2016, 03:23 UTC

The fire started on 14 November 2016 in Cook, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 11,363 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 649th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 132 in Australia in 2016, of 427.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Cook · 2023 Cook · 2020

Burnt area: 11,363ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 8days; 14 Nov 2016 – 21 Nov 2016
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 14 Nov; 2016
Heat detections: 419; in a single hotspot: 95 MW
Danger at start: 30; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 516MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Nov21 Nov

Play back 21 Nov 2016

How it evolved, day by day

14 Nov 16 Nov 18 Nov 20 Nov

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

The weather it burned in

39°high

51km/h · peak gust

13%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.4 mm on 29 Nov.

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 7.2% of the area of London (114 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

11,514 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	37.3 °C	33 %	32 km/h	0.2 mm	High 30
15 Nov	39.2 °C	19 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
16 Nov	38.8 °C	13 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 59
17 Nov	38.2 °C	17 %	51 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 61
18 Nov	37.6 °C	17 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 60
19 Nov	36.1 °C	21 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
20 Nov	35.4 °C	29 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
21 Nov	36.1 °C	28 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
22 Nov after	37.0 °C	20 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
23 Nov after	37.8 °C	24 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
24 Nov after	37.7 °C	28 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
25 Nov after	39.2 °C	20 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
26 Nov after	37.2 °C	28 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
27 Nov after	37.6 °C	27 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
28 Nov after	36.3 °C	30 %	36 km/h	0.2 mm	Very high 44
29 Nov after	36.8 °C	32 %	31 km/h	4.4 mm	Moderate 15

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 7 Nov 2016

After · 28 Nov 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 · 419Every 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 November 2016 and 21 November 2016: 8 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 11,363 hectares (113.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Cook (11,514 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 39.2 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 61, class Extreme.
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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 419 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