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Cook fire, 26 July 2019 Cook

Out · last detection 2 Aug 2019, 15:22 UTC

The fire started on 26 July 2019 in Cook, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,192 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1125th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 538 in Australia in 2019, of 802.

Burnt area
7,192ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
8days
26 Jul 2019 – 2 Aug 2019
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
26 Jul
2019
Heat detections
241
in a single hotspot: 101 MW
Danger at start
31
High · FWI index
Energy released
2.1GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

2 Aug 2019
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 26 Jul2 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

26272829303112

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
62km/h · peak gust
33%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

46% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 101 ha in 2016, 3,107 ha in 2017, 169 ha in 2018.

What happened to each town

  1. Cook where it started
    7,222 ha reached on 26 Jul
    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)
26 Jul 27.8 °C 41 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
27 Jul 27.8 °C 43 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
28 Jul 28.3 °C 38 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
29 Jul 28.9 °C 35 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
30 Jul 30.1 °C 35 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
31 Jul 29.4 °C 38 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
1 Aug 29.1 °C 33 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
2 Aug 28.2 °C 42 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
3 Aug after 27.3 °C 52 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
4 Aug after 28.7 °C 42 % 62 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
5 Aug after 27.2 °C 48 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
6 Aug after 27.7 °C 51 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
7 Aug after 27.8 °C 58 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
8 Aug after 30.5 °C 47 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
9 Aug after 32.6 °C 44 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
10 Aug after 31.4 °C 43 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
11 Aug after 32.1 °C 26 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
12 Aug after 31.2 °C 35 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
13 Aug after 28.4 °C 45 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
14 Aug after 28.1 °C 51 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm High 34

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 19 Jul 2019
After · 9 Aug 2019

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 · 241Every 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 26 July 2019 and 2 August 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 7,192 hectares (71.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Cook (7,222 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 30.1 °C, humidity dropped to 33 % and gusts hit 62 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 37, 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

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.

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.