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Cook fire, 30 August 2019 Cook

Out · last detection 9 Sept 2019, 15:09 UTC

The fire started on 30 August 2019 in Cook, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,233 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1632th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 761 in Australia in 2019, of 802.

The power measured by the satellite is low (20.2 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Cook · 2025Cook · 2023Cook · 2026Cook · 2018

Burnt area
5,233ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
11days
30 Aug 2019 – 9 Sept 2019
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
30 Aug
2019
Heat detections
155
in a single hotspot: 20 MW
Danger at start
33
High · FWI index
Average daily power
70MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 30 Aug9 Sept
9 Sept 2019

How it evolved, day by day

30 Aug 2019 · 53 MW · 10 31 Aug 2019 · 62 MW · 14 1 Sept 2019 · 80 MW · 20 2 Sept 2019 · 60 MW · 6 3 Sept 2019 · 28 MW · 13 4 Sept 2019 · 183 MW · 31 5 Sept 2019 · 154 MW · 31 6 Sept 2019 · 34 MW · 8 7 Sept 2019 · 66 MW · 12 8 Sept 2019 · 34 MW · 5 9 Sept 2019 · 13 MW · 5
30 Aug 1 Sept 3 Sept 4 Sept 5 Sept 7 Sept 9 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

33°high
53km/h · peak gust
21%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

42% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 78 ha in 2016, 2,215 ha in 2017, 118 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,218 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.3% of the area of London (52 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. Cook where it started
    5,246 ha reached on 30 Aug
    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.

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)
30 Aug 31.0 °C 37 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
31 Aug 31.4 °C 34 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
1 Sept 29.9 °C 35 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
2 Sept 29.2 °C 35 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
3 Sept 29.0 °C 35 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
4 Sept 28.6 °C 40 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
5 Sept 28.9 °C 36 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
6 Sept 30.0 °C 34 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
7 Sept 31.3 °C 30 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
8 Sept 33.2 °C 21 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
9 Sept 31.2 °C 26 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
10 Sept after 30.4 °C 22 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
11 Sept after 27.9 °C 38 % 60 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
12 Sept after 28.1 °C 45 % 59 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 40
13 Sept after 28.7 °C 40 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
14 Sept after 29.2 °C 39 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
15 Sept after 29.4 °C 38 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
16 Sept after 29.4 °C 42 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
17 Sept after 30.8 °C 36 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
18 Sept after 32.6 °C 25 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
19 Sept after 31.4 °C 34 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 23 Aug 2019
After · 16 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 · 155Every 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 30 August 2019 and 9 September 2019: 11 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 5,233 hectares (52.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Cook (5,246 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.2 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 45, 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. 155 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.