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Cook fire, 6 September 2017 Cook

Out · last detection 9 Sept 2017, 03:49 UTC

The fire started on 6 September 2017 in Cook, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,897 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1432th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 691 in Australia in 2017, of 862.

Burnt area
5,897ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
4days
6 Sept 2017 – 9 Sept 2017
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
6 Sept
2017
Heat detections
183
in a single hotspot: 75 MW
Danger at start
49
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
1.8GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

9 Sept 2017
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Sept9 Sept

How it evolved, day by day

6789

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
52km/h · peak gust
19%lowest humidity

It had gone 31 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

10% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 562 ha in 2016.

What happened to each town

  1. Cook where it started
    5,914 ha reached on 6 Sept
    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)
6 Sept 34.7 °C 19 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
7 Sept 34.1 °C 22 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
8 Sept 33.0 °C 27 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
9 Sept 33.2 °C 22 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
10 Sept after 32.4 °C 33 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
11 Sept after 31.2 °C 45 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
12 Sept after 33.8 °C 37 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
13 Sept after 35.2 °C 31 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
14 Sept after 34.2 °C 35 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
15 Sept after 32.8 °C 31 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
16 Sept after 32.8 °C 32 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
17 Sept after 32.9 °C 33 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
18 Sept after 30.3 °C 51 % 55 km/h 0.2 mm High 37
19 Sept after 30.1 °C 59 % 58 km/h 0.6 mm High 28

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 30 Aug 2017
After · 16 Sept 2017

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 · 183Every 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 6 September 2017 and 9 September 2017: 4 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 5,897 hectares (59.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Cook (5,914 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.7 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 51, 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

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.