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Cook fire, 12 August 2019 Cook

Out · last detection 26 Aug 2019, 03:23 UTC

The fire started on 12 August 2019 in Cook, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,065 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1706th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 790 in Australia in 2019, of 802.

Burnt area
5,065ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
15days
12 Aug 2019 – 26 Aug 2019
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
12 Aug
2019
Heat detections
176
in a single hotspot: 32 MW
Danger at start
32
High · FWI index
Energy released
764MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

26 Aug 2019
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 12 Aug26 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

1213141617181920212223242526

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
55km/h · peak gust
30%lowest humidity

It had gone 7 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

37% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,602 ha in 2017, 415 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,868 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Cook where it started
    5,112 ha reached on 12 Aug
    0.0 %

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)
12 Aug 27.9 °C 40 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
13 Aug 28.2 °C 43 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
14 Aug 28.1 °C 45 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
15 Aug 28.2 °C 50 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
16 Aug 30.6 °C 47 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
17 Aug 29.4 °C 47 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
18 Aug 30.4 °C 41 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
19 Aug 30.5 °C 38 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
20 Aug 29.8 °C 31 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
21 Aug 28.0 °C 45 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
22 Aug 28.1 °C 34 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
23 Aug 27.6 °C 30 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
24 Aug 28.0 °C 35 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
25 Aug 27.7 °C 49 % 36 km/h 0.3 mm High 30
26 Aug 29.6 °C 37 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
27 Aug after 29.8 °C 38 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
28 Aug after 29.9 °C 37 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
29 Aug after 29.9 °C 39 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
30 Aug after 29.9 °C 41 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
31 Aug after 29.7 °C 36 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
1 Sept after 29.6 °C 37 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
2 Sept after 28.5 °C 35 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
3 Sept after 28.0 °C 35 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
4 Sept after 28.6 °C 33 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
5 Sept after 28.9 °C 31 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 36

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 5 Aug 2019
After · 2 Sept 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 · 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 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 12 August 2019 and 26 August 2019: 15 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 5,065 hectares (50.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Cook (5,112 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 30.6 °C, humidity dropped to 30 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 41, 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.