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Cook fire, 15 September 2018 Cook

Out · last detection 5 Oct 2018, 03:17 UTC

The fire started on 15 September 2018 in Cook, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 21 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,558 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 708th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 356 in Australia in 2018, of 923.

Burnt area
10,558ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
21days
15 Sept 2018 – 5 Oct 2018
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
15 Sept
2018
Heat detections
495
in a single hotspot: 281 MW
Danger at start
27
High · FWI index
Energy released
4.2GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

5 Oct 2018
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 Sept5 Oct

How it evolved, day by day

1516171819202122232425262728293012345

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

The weather it burned in

31°high
74km/h · peak gust
28%lowest humidity

It had gone 58 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.0 mm on 13 Oct.

This area had burned before

23% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,167 ha in 2016, 284 ha in 2017.

What happened to each town

  1. Cook where it started
    10,697 ha reached on 15 Sept
    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 Rain Danger (FWI)
15 Sept 27.5 °C 51 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
16 Sept 30.0 °C 28 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
17 Sept 28.8 °C 39 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
18 Sept 27.2 °C 45 % 60 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
19 Sept 27.7 °C 43 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
20 Sept 27.5 °C 40 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
21 Sept 26.7 °C 54 % 66 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
22 Sept 27.6 °C 47 % 71 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
23 Sept 27.0 °C 43 % 68 km/h 0.1 mm High 35
24 Sept 26.3 °C 44 % 63 km/h 0.1 mm High 33
25 Sept 28.3 °C 36 % 59 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
26 Sept 27.5 °C 39 % 59 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
27 Sept 26.4 °C 46 % 58 km/h 1.1 mm High 22
28 Sept 27.1 °C 37 % 60 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
29 Sept 27.0 °C 40 % 65 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
30 Sept 27.4 °C 44 % 60 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
1 Oct 27.3 °C 46 % 69 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
2 Oct 27.6 °C 42 % 74 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
3 Oct 27.0 °C 44 % 64 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
4 Oct 27.6 °C 37 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
5 Oct 31.0 °C 34 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
6 Oct after 29.9 °C 42 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
7 Oct after 29.4 °C 42 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
8 Oct after 29.5 °C 42 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
9 Oct after 29.4 °C 44 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
10 Oct after 29.8 °C 38 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
11 Oct after 30.0 °C 39 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
12 Oct after 31.2 °C 41 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
13 Oct after 30.0 °C 62 % 37 km/h 2.0 mm Low 10

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 8 Sept 2018
After · 12 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 · 495Every 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 15 September 2018 and 5 October 2018: 21 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 10,558 hectares (105.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Cook (10,697 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 31.0 °C, humidity dropped to 28 % and gusts hit 74 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, 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
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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.

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.