How long did the Cook fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 27 September 2018 to 8 October 2018 (12 days). The perimeter dates it from 1 October 2018 to 8 October 2018.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,209 hectares (52.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Cook (5,225 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 34.8 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % and gusts hit 63 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 · 2018-09-27 → 2018-10-08

Cook fire, 27 September 2018 Cook

Out · last detection 8 Oct 2018, 04:02 UTC

The fire started on 27 September 2018 in Cook, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,209 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1650th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1742 with a page). Number 884 in Australia in 2018, of 924.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Cook · 2023 Cook · 2026 Cook · 2025 Cook · 2023

Burnt area: 5,209ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 12days; 27 Sept 2018 – 8 Oct 2018
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 27 Sept; 2018
Heat detections: 180; in a single hotspot: 70 MW
Danger at start: 41; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 295MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 27 Sept8 Oct

Play back 8 Oct 2018

How it evolved, day by day

28 Sept 2 Oct 4 Oct 5 Oct 6 Oct 8 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

35°high

63km/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

5% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 254 ha in 2017.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.3% of the area of London (52 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

5,225 ha reached on 28 Sept

0.0 %

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)
1 Oct	31.2 °C	39 %	55 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
2 Oct	31.5 °C	36 %	63 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
3 Oct	31.5 °C	38 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
4 Oct	33.3 °C	28 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
5 Oct	34.6 °C	27 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
6 Oct	34.8 °C	31 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
7 Oct	34.1 °C	28 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
8 Oct	33.0 °C	33 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
9 Oct after	32.6 °C	36 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
10 Oct after	34.9 °C	27 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
11 Oct after	33.9 °C	33 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
12 Oct after	35.3 °C	29 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
13 Oct after	36.4 °C	32 %	34 km/h	0.1 mm	Very high 39
14 Oct after	33.8 °C	47 %	42 km/h	0.5 mm	High 34
15 Oct after	34.4 °C	42 %	49 km/h	0.2 mm	High 34
16 Oct after	34.2 °C	37 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
17 Oct after	35.0 °C	28 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
18 Oct after	35.4 °C	28 %	39 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 · 20 Sept 2018

After · 15 Oct 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 · 180Every 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?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 27 September 2018 to 8 October 2018 (12 days). The perimeter dates it from 1 October 2018 to 8 October 2018.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,209 hectares (52.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Cook (5,225 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 34.8 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % and gusts hit 63 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

26 October 2026 Start date: 1 October 2018 → 27 September 2018.

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

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?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 1 October 2018 to 8 October 2018. 180 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