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Cook fire, 31 October 2018 Napranum, Cook

Out · last detection 7 Nov 2018, 15:46 UTC

The fire started on 31 October 2018 in Cook, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,387 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 1572th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 843 in Australia in 2018, of 923.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Cook · 2026Cook · 2016Cook · 2018Cook · 2021

Burnt area
5,387ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
7days
31 Oct 2018 – 6 Nov 2018
Municipalities hit
2
local government areas
Started on
31 Oct
2018
Heat detections
223
in a single hotspot: 158 MW
Danger at start
39
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
266MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 31 Oct6 Nov
7 Nov 2018

How it evolved, day by day

31 Oct 2018 · 2 MW · 1 1 Nov 2018 · 11 MW · 2 2 Nov 2018 · 136 MW · 27 3 Nov 2018 · 1,549 MW · 95 4 Nov 2018 · 207 MW · 31 5 Nov 2018 · 106 MW · 21 6 Nov 2018 · 94 MW · 17 7 Nov 2018 · 19 MW · 8
31 Oct 2 Nov 3 Nov 4 Nov 6 Nov

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

The weather it burned in

36°high
60km/h · peak gust
31%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

31% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,683 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.4% of the area of London (54 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. Napranum
    3,474 ha reached on 2 Nov
    1.7 %
  2. Cook where it started
    1,936 ha reached on 28 Oct
    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.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2020
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, satellite-based estimate).

This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned.

Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu

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)
31 Oct 34.2 °C 36 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
1 Nov 34.5 °C 40 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
2 Nov 35.5 °C 35 % 60 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
3 Nov 35.4 °C 37 % 54 km/h 0.6 mm High 38
4 Nov 34.9 °C 41 % 54 km/h 0.6 mm High 36
5 Nov 36.4 °C 34 % 40 km/h 0.2 mm High 37
6 Nov 36.0 °C 31 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
7 Nov after 35.4 °C 32 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
8 Nov after 36.3 °C 32 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
9 Nov after 36.9 °C 32 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
10 Nov after 35.4 °C 34 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
11 Nov after 35.2 °C 37 % 43 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 39
12 Nov after 35.3 °C 35 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
13 Nov after 35.0 °C 35 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
14 Nov after 36.2 °C 28 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
15 Nov after 36.1 °C 30 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
16 Nov after 35.4 °C 28 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 24 Oct 2018
After · 13 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 · 223Every 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 31 October 2018 and 6 November 2018: 7 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 5,387 hectares (53.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Napranum (3,474 ha, 1.7 %); Cook (1,936 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.4 °C, humidity dropped to 31 % and gusts hit 60 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, 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

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

No changes since 24 October 2026.

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?

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. 223 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.
  • Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2020, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

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.