How long did the Cook fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 28 August 2018 and 8 September 2018: 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 10,884 hectares (108.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Cook (11,029 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 35.5 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 43 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, 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.

AU · Australia · 2018-08-28 → 2018-09-08

Cook fire, 28 August 2018 Cook

Out · last detection 8 Sept 2018, 16:12 UTC

The fire started on 28 August 2018 in Cook, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,884 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 684th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 342 in Australia in 2018, of 923.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Cook · 2016 Cook · 2016 Cook · 2018 Cook · 2025

Burnt area: 10,884ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 12days; 28 Aug 2018 – 8 Sept 2018
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 28 Aug; 2018
Heat detections: 318; in a single hotspot: 63 MW
Danger at start: 41; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 193MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 28 Aug8 Sept

Play back 8 Sept 2018

How it evolved, day by day

28 Aug 30 Aug 1 Sept 3 Sept 5 Sept 7 Sept

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

The weather it burned in

36°high

43km/h · peak gust

21%lowest humidity

It had gone 56 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

34% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,747 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 6.9% of the area of London (109 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

11,029 ha reached on 28 Aug

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	Danger (FWI)
28 Aug	32.0 °C	30 %	36 km/h	Very high 41
29 Aug	32.5 °C	29 %	43 km/h	Very high 43
30 Aug	31.7 °C	27 %	42 km/h	Very high 43
31 Aug	31.5 °C	29 %	30 km/h	High 36
1 Sept	33.9 °C	30 %	25 km/h	High 36
2 Sept	35.5 °C	24 %	36 km/h	Very high 43
3 Sept	34.9 °C	21 %	38 km/h	Very high 45
4 Sept	33.8 °C	23 %	29 km/h	Very high 42
5 Sept	32.9 °C	26 %	36 km/h	Very high 46
6 Sept	33.0 °C	26 %	35 km/h	Very high 46
7 Sept	33.5 °C	26 %	37 km/h	Very high 46
8 Sept	33.7 °C	27 %	41 km/h	Very high 46
9 Sept after	34.1 °C	26 %	40 km/h	Very high 48
10 Sept after	32.6 °C	29 %	47 km/h	Very high 49
11 Sept after	32.0 °C	32 %	45 km/h	Very high 45
12 Sept after	34.2 °C	22 %	44 km/h	Very high 49
13 Sept after	33.4 °C	27 %	46 km/h	Extreme 50
14 Sept after	32.4 °C	29 %	46 km/h	Very high 47
15 Sept after	34.8 °C	26 %	36 km/h	Very high 42
16 Sept after	36.0 °C	17 %	32 km/h	Very high 47
17 Sept after	35.6 °C	17 %	44 km/h	Extreme 54
18 Sept after	32.7 °C	24 %	46 km/h	Extreme 55

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 21 Aug 2018

After · 15 Sept 2018

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 · 318Every 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 28 August 2018 and 8 September 2018: 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 10,884 hectares (108.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Cook (11,029 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 35.5 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 43 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, 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

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. 318 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