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Cook fire, 24 September 2018 Cook

Out · last detection 13 Oct 2018, 15:16 UTC

The fire started on 24 September 2018 in Cook, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 20 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 50,188 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 100th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 36 in Australia in 2018, of 923.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Cook · 2021Cook · 2018Cook · 2023Cook · 2019

Burnt area
50,188ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
20days
24 Sept 2018 – 13 Oct 2018
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
24 Sept
2018
Heat detections
2,093
in a single hotspot: 58 MW
Danger at start
49
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
665MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

13 Oct 2018
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 24 Sept13 Oct

How it evolved, day by day

24 Sept 2018 · 1 MW · 1 25 Sept 2018 · 60 MW · 16 26 Sept 2018 · 270 MW · 41 27 Sept 2018 · 204 MW · 34 28 Sept 2018 · 441 MW · 75 29 Sept 2018 · 356 MW · 51 30 Sept 2018 · 419 MW · 80 1 Oct 2018 · 599 MW · 144 2 Oct 2018 · 1,034 MW · 120 3 Oct 2018 · 354 MW · 82 4 Oct 2018 · 460 MW · 71 5 Oct 2018 · 421 MW · 51 6 Oct 2018 · 302 MW · 96 7 Oct 2018 · 417 MW · 113 8 Oct 2018 · 517 MW · 71 9 Oct 2018 · 1,224 MW · 162 10 Oct 2018 · 1,585 MW · 235 11 Oct 2018 · 1,745 MW · 264 12 Oct 2018 · 1,665 MW · 222 13 Oct 2018 · 1,227 MW · 164
24 Sept 27 Sept 30 Sept 3 Oct 6 Oct 9 Oct 11 Oct 12 Oct

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

The weather it burned in

37°high
60km/h · peak gust
11%lowest humidity

It had gone 47 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

3% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,647 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 32% of the area of London (502 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. Cook where it started
    50,963 ha reached on 24 Sept
    0.5 %

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)
24 Sept 31.1 °C 29 % 59 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
25 Sept 31.8 °C 26 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
26 Sept 31.7 °C 25 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
27 Sept 31.2 °C 26 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
28 Sept 30.4 °C 27 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
29 Sept 31.4 °C 27 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
30 Sept 32.5 °C 19 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
1 Oct 32.4 °C 25 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
2 Oct 32.0 °C 25 % 60 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
3 Oct 32.9 °C 23 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
4 Oct 36.0 °C 11 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
5 Oct 34.1 °C 24 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
6 Oct 33.8 °C 26 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
7 Oct 34.4 °C 25 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
8 Oct 34.6 °C 25 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
9 Oct 35.6 °C 22 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
10 Oct 36.6 °C 21 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
11 Oct 37.0 °C 18 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
12 Oct 36.5 °C 22 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
13 Oct 35.3 °C 31 % 41 km/h 0.4 mm Very high 45
14 Oct after 32.8 °C 42 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
15 Oct after 35.5 °C 29 % 44 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 42
16 Oct after 35.7 °C 29 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
17 Oct after 35.0 °C 26 % 41 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 43
18 Oct after 33.9 °C 34 % 37 km/h 0.7 mm High 35
19 Oct after 35.8 °C 27 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
20 Oct after 36.0 °C 24 % 45 km/h 0.3 mm Very high 47
21 Oct after 36.1 °C 26 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
22 Oct after 36.0 °C 18 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
23 Oct after 34.3 °C 31 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 17 Sept 2018
After · 20 Oct 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 · 2,093Every 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 24 September 2018 and 13 October 2018: 20 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 50,188 hectares (501.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Cook (50,963 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.0 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 60 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 57, 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.

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. 2,093 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.