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Cook fire, 31 August 2018 Aurukun, Cook

Out · last detection 23 Sept 2018, 03:43 UTC

The fire started on 31 August 2018 in Cook, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 23 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 25,955 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 221th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 89 in Australia in 2018, of 923.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Aurukun · 2016Aurukun · 2016Aurukun · 2017Aurukun · 2016

Burnt area
25,955ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
23days
31 Aug 2018 – 22 Sept 2018
Municipalities hit
2
local government areas
Started on
31 Aug
2018
Heat detections
1,088
in a single hotspot: 156 MW
Danger at start
33
High · FWI index
Average daily power
380MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 31 Aug22 Sept
23 Sept 2018

How it evolved, day by day

31 Aug 2018 · 42 MW · 6 2 Sept 2018 · 349 MW · 17 3 Sept 2018 · 181 MW · 18 4 Sept 2018 · 134 MW · 30 5 Sept 2018 · 1,253 MW · 103 6 Sept 2018 · 439 MW · 68 7 Sept 2018 · 610 MW · 52 8 Sept 2018 · 405 MW · 40 9 Sept 2018 · 89 MW · 20 10 Sept 2018 · 387 MW · 43 11 Sept 2018 · 126 MW · 31 12 Sept 2018 · 82 MW · 13 13 Sept 2018 · 134 MW · 33 14 Sept 2018 · 652 MW · 138 15 Sept 2018 · 75 MW · 41 16 Sept 2018 · 1,024 MW · 95 17 Sept 2018 · 1,168 MW · 117 18 Sept 2018 · 307 MW · 42 19 Sept 2018 · 236 MW · 57 20 Sept 2018 · 170 MW · 31 21 Sept 2018 · 527 MW · 18 22 Sept 2018 · 328 MW · 32 23 Sept 2018 · 13 MW · 2
31 Aug 5 Sept 9 Sept 13 Sept 17 Sept 21 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

34°high
49km/h · peak gust
21%lowest humidity

It had gone 19 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

76% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 17,176 ha in 2016, 5,956 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 19,724 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 16% of the area of London (260 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

  1. Aurukun
    13,923 ha reached on 30 Aug
    1.9 %
  2. Cook where it started
    12,136 ha reached on 24 Aug
    0.1 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance runs from the point marking the centre of each area 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)
24 Aug 32.4 °C 33 % 29 km/h 0.1 mm High 33
25 Aug 30.7 °C 44 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
26 Aug 30.8 °C 42 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
27 Aug 31.0 °C 46 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
28 Aug 32.2 °C 36 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
29 Aug 31.3 °C 43 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
30 Aug 31.2 °C 37 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
31 Aug 30.4 °C 43 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
1 Sept 30.9 °C 43 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
2 Sept 33.7 °C 35 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
3 Sept 34.2 °C 29 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
4 Sept 32.4 °C 31 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
5 Sept 31.4 °C 28 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
6 Sept 32.3 °C 30 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
7 Sept 32.8 °C 34 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
8 Sept 32.6 °C 33 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
9 Sept 33.0 °C 32 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
10 Sept 33.0 °C 30 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
11 Sept 32.4 °C 36 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
12 Sept 32.3 °C 35 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
13 Sept 33.0 °C 31 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
14 Sept 32.2 °C 41 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
15 Sept 31.7 °C 40 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
16 Sept 32.7 °C 34 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
17 Sept 33.7 °C 26 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
18 Sept 32.9 °C 28 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
19 Sept 33.0 °C 28 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
20 Sept 34.2 °C 24 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
21 Sept 33.1 °C 29 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
22 Sept 33.4 °C 30 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
23 Sept after 33.0 °C 31 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
24 Sept after 32.7 °C 28 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
25 Sept after 32.4 °C 27 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
26 Sept after 32.7 °C 29 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
27 Sept after 33.2 °C 26 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
28 Sept after 33.0 °C 21 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
29 Sept after 32.2 °C 27 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
30 Sept after 31.6 °C 30 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
1 Oct after 33.3 °C 31 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
2 Oct after 33.4 °C 28 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
3 Oct after 32.7 °C 33 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
4 Oct after 32.6 °C 32 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
5 Oct after 29.6 °C 50 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
6 Oct after 32.8 °C 33 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
7 Oct after 34.3 °C 24 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
8 Oct after 33.4 °C 36 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
9 Oct after 34.5 °C 32 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 24 Aug 2018
After · 29 Sept 2018

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 · 1,088Every 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 31 August 2018 and 22 September 2018: 23 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 25,955 hectares (259.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Aurukun (13,923 ha, 1.9 %); Cook (12,136 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.2 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 48, 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

History of this page Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

RSS Changes to this page

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
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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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 1,088 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.