How long did the Cook fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 20 June 2019 and 27 June 2019: 8 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 6,529 hectares (65.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Cook (6,565 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 30.7 °C, humidity dropped to 35 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 33, 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 · 2019-06-20 → 2019-06-27

Cook fire, 20 June 2019 Cook

Out · last detection 28 Jun 2019, 03:30 UTC

The fire started on 20 June 2019 in Cook, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,529 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1259th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 587 in Australia in 2019, of 802.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Cook · 2023 Cook · 2021 Cook · 2025 Aurukun · 2026

Burnt area: 6,529ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 8days; 20 Jun 2019 – 27 Jun 2019
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 20 Jun; 2019
Heat detections: 176; in a single hotspot: 41 MW
Danger at start: 27; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 171MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 20 Jun27 Jun

Play back 28 Jun 2019

How it evolved, day by day

20 Jun 22 Jun 24 Jun 27 Jun

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

52km/h · peak gust

35%lowest humidity

It had gone 34 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

14% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 81 ha in 2016, 885 ha in 2017, 26 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 944 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 4.1% of the area of London (65 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

6,565 ha reached on 20 Jun

0.1 %

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)
20 Jun	29.9 °C	38 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
21 Jun	30.7 °C	40 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
22 Jun	30.6 °C	36 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
23 Jun	30.7 °C	38 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
24 Jun	30.5 °C	36 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
25 Jun	30.1 °C	35 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
26 Jun	28.2 °C	51 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
27 Jun	30.7 °C	43 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
28 Jun after	30.4 °C	47 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
29 Jun after	29.3 °C	55 %	52 km/h	0.2 mm	High 32
30 Jun after	30.2 °C	36 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
1 Jul after	30.0 °C	37 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
2 Jul after	30.0 °C	38 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
3 Jul after	29.7 °C	36 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
4 Jul after	29.7 °C	34 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
5 Jul after	30.2 °C	33 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
6 Jul after	30.9 °C	36 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
7 Jul after	30.6 °C	43 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
8 Jul after	31.3 °C	38 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
9 Jul after	31.6 °C	38 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
10 Jul after	29.4 °C	49 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
11 Jul after	30.2 °C	41 %	34 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 · 13 Jun 2019

After · 4 Jul 2019

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 · 176Every 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 20 June 2019 and 27 June 2019: 8 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 6,529 hectares (65.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Cook (6,565 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 30.7 °C, humidity dropped to 35 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 33, 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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?

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. 176 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