How long did the Cook fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 17 September 2018 and 29 September 2018: 13 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 13,575 hectares (135.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Cook (13,643 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 29.9 °C, humidity dropped to 38 % and gusts hit 68 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 36, class 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 · 2018-09-17 → 2018-09-29

Cook fire, 17 September 2018 Cook

Out · last detection 29 Sept 2018, 03:30 UTC

The fire started on 17 September 2018 in Cook, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 13,575 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 533th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 245 in Australia in 2018, of 923.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Cook · 2016 Cook · 2023 Cook · 2026 Cook · 2025

Burnt area: 13,575ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 13days; 17 Sept 2018 – 29 Sept 2018
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 17 Sept; 2018
Heat detections: 392; in a single hotspot: 132 MW
Danger at start: 28; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 327MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 17 Sept29 Sept

Play back 29 Sept 2018

How it evolved, day by day

17 Sept 18 Sept 19 Sept 22 Sept 24 Sept 26 Sept 28 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

30°high

68km/h · peak gust

38%lowest humidity

It had gone 5 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

22% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,002 ha in 2016.

1,885 ha Cook fire, December 2016 11,695 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 8.6% of the area of London (136 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

13,643 ha reached on 17 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)
17 Sept	29.9 °C	38 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
18 Sept	28.5 °C	47 %	54 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
19 Sept	28.1 °C	46 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
20 Sept	28.4 °C	44 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
21 Sept	28.0 °C	54 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
22 Sept	28.4 °C	50 %	63 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
23 Sept	27.2 °C	53 %	58 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
24 Sept	27.1 °C	53 %	53 km/h	0.6 mm	High 24
25 Sept	28.1 °C	46 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
26 Sept	27.5 °C	52 %	54 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
27 Sept	28.3 °C	42 %	53 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
28 Sept	27.8 °C	40 %	56 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
29 Sept	27.6 °C	44 %	59 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
30 Sept after	28.1 °C	44 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
1 Oct after	27.3 °C	53 %	57 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
2 Oct after	28.3 °C	48 %	68 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
3 Oct after	27.9 °C	51 %	56 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
4 Oct after	28.8 °C	41 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
5 Oct after	31.5 °C	36 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
6 Oct after	31.3 °C	41 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
7 Oct after	30.2 °C	42 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
8 Oct after	29.4 °C	47 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
9 Oct after	28.9 °C	50 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
10 Oct after	30.7 °C	41 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
11 Oct after	29.8 °C	46 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
12 Oct after	31.7 °C	42 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 10 Sept 2018

After · 6 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 · 392Every 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?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 17 September 2018 and 29 September 2018: 13 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 13,575 hectares (135.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Cook (13,643 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 29.9 °C, humidity dropped to 38 % and gusts hit 68 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 36, class 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 392 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