Skip to content
worldfires
AU · Australia · →

Cook fire, 30 September 2018 Cook

Out · last detection 29 Oct 2018, 04:08 UTC

The fire started on 30 September 2018 in Cook, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 30 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 22,270 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 281th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 118 in Australia in 2018, of 923.

Burnt area
22,270ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
30days
30 Sept 2018 – 29 Oct 2018
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
30 Sept
2018
Heat detections
799
in a single hotspot: 136 MW
Danger at start
37
High · FWI index
Energy released
5.9GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

29 Oct 2018
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 30 Sept29 Oct

How it evolved, day by day

301234567891011121314151617181920212223242526272829

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
64km/h · peak gust
27%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

55% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 12,538 ha in 2017.

What happened to each town

  1. Cook where it started
    22,294 ha reached on 30 Sept
    0.2 %

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)
26 Sept 31.4 °C 36 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
27 Sept 32.0 °C 32 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
28 Sept 30.6 °C 29 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
29 Sept 30.8 °C 32 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
30 Sept 30.8 °C 38 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
1 Oct 30.9 °C 42 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
2 Oct 31.2 °C 39 % 64 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
3 Oct 31.2 °C 40 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
4 Oct 32.4 °C 34 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
5 Oct 33.7 °C 31 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
6 Oct 33.6 °C 36 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
7 Oct 33.1 °C 33 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
8 Oct 32.3 °C 34 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
9 Oct 32.1 °C 38 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
10 Oct 33.3 °C 33 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
11 Oct 33.1 °C 38 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
12 Oct 34.4 °C 36 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
13 Oct 35.3 °C 37 % 34 km/h 0.2 mm High 36
14 Oct 33.5 °C 50 % 42 km/h 1.1 mm High 24
15 Oct 34.2 °C 43 % 49 km/h 0.4 mm High 30
16 Oct 33.7 °C 41 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
17 Oct 34.4 °C 32 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
18 Oct 34.6 °C 29 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
19 Oct 34.6 °C 34 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
20 Oct 33.9 °C 39 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
21 Oct 35.4 °C 32 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
22 Oct 35.4 °C 33 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
23 Oct 34.6 °C 35 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
24 Oct 34.2 °C 31 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
25 Oct 33.4 °C 27 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
26 Oct 32.7 °C 30 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
27 Oct 34.0 °C 37 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
28 Oct 33.6 °C 45 % 43 km/h 0.2 mm High 35
29 Oct 35.3 °C 43 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
30 Oct after 32.6 °C 52 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
31 Oct after 32.7 °C 41 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
1 Nov after 33.4 °C 44 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
2 Nov after 34.2 °C 41 % 63 km/h 0.4 mm Very high 40
3 Nov after 34.0 °C 43 % 55 km/h 0.9 mm High 32
4 Nov after 33.5 °C 46 % 55 km/h 0.5 mm High 33
5 Nov after 34.7 °C 40 % 42 km/h 0.1 mm High 34
6 Nov after 34.8 °C 35 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
7 Nov after 34.4 °C 36 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
8 Nov after 35.1 °C 37 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
9 Nov after 36.0 °C 34 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
10 Nov after 34.1 °C 36 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
11 Nov after 34.2 °C 39 % 45 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 38
12 Nov after 34.1 °C 40 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
13 Nov after 33.8 °C 39 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 23 Sept 2018
After · 5 Nov 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 · 799Every 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 30 September 2018 and 29 October 2018: 30 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 22,270 hectares (222.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Cook (22,294 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.4 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % and gusts hit 64 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, 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

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.