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Cook fire, 6 October 2017 Cook, Douglas

Out · last detection 15 Oct 2017, 04:13 UTC

The fire started on 6 October 2017 in Cook, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 16,537 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 397th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 158 in Australia in 2017, of 862.

Burnt area
16,537ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
10days
6 Oct 2017 – 15 Oct 2017
Municipalities hit
2
local government areas
Started on
6 Oct
2017
Heat detections
591
in a single hotspot: 83 MW
Danger at start
26
High · FWI index
Energy released
4.1GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

15 Oct 2017
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Oct15 Oct

How it evolved, day by day

6789101112131415

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

The weather it burned in

31°high
56km/h · peak gust
36%lowest humidity

It had gone 16 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.6 mm on 16 Oct.

This area had burned before

0% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 14 ha in 2016.

What happened to each town

  1. Cook where it started
    14,521 ha reached on 6 Oct
    0.1 %
  2. Douglas
    2,262 ha reached on 10 Oct
    0.9 %

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 30.8 °C 49 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
7 Oct 30.1 °C 46 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
8 Oct 30.6 °C 47 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
9 Oct 30.2 °C 41 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
10 Oct 30.7 °C 36 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
11 Oct 30.3 °C 42 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
12 Oct 31.0 °C 45 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
13 Oct 31.1 °C 51 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
14 Oct 30.8 °C 47 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
15 Oct 31.1 °C 50 % 41 km/h 1.2 mm Moderate 16
16 Oct after 29.1 °C 54 % 39 km/h 4.6 mm Low 6

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 29 Sept 2017
After · 22 Oct 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 · 591Every 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 October 2017 and 15 October 2017: 10 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 16,537 hectares (165.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Cook (14,521 ha, 0.1 %); Douglas (2,262 ha, 0.9 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 31.1 °C, humidity dropped to 36 % and gusts hit 56 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 30, class 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.