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Cook fire, 9 September 2019 Cook

Out · last detection 26 Oct 2019, 15:27 UTC

The fire started on 9 September 2019 in Cook, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 48 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 27,252 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

This page is probably a fire complex, not a single fire. GWIS merges into one perimeter the fires that touch over weeks, which in large burning seasons can join dozens of separate fires. The total area is reliable; the origin and dates refer to the whole complex.

Other fire pages in the same area and on the same dates:

It is the 200th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1742 with a page). Number 111 in Australia in 2019, of 802.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Cook · 2018Cook · 2023Cook · 2026Cook · 2022

Burnt area
27,252ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
48days
9 Sept 2019 – 26 Oct 2019
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
9 Sept
2019
Heat detections
1,229
in a single hotspot: 333 MW
Danger at start
32
High · FWI index
Average daily power
278MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 9 Sept26 Oct
26 Oct 2019

How it evolved, day by day

9 Sept 2019 · 1 MW · 2 10 Sept 2019 · 39 MW · 4 11 Sept 2019 · 23 MW · 4 12 Sept 2019 · 10 MW · 3 14 Sept 2019 · 180 MW · 14 16 Sept 2019 · 2 MW · 1 17 Sept 2019 · 369 MW · 43 18 Sept 2019 · 481 MW · 63 19 Sept 2019 · 316 MW · 33 21 Sept 2019 · 19 MW · 3 22 Sept 2019 · 6 MW · 3 23 Sept 2019 · 161 MW · 33 24 Sept 2019 · 656 MW · 56 25 Sept 2019 · 255 MW · 13 28 Sept 2019 · 310 MW · 35 29 Sept 2019 · 70 MW · 12 30 Sept 2019 · 11 MW · 9 1 Oct 2019 · 342 MW · 9 3 Oct 2019 · 342 MW · 50 4 Oct 2019 · 332 MW · 56 5 Oct 2019 · 230 MW · 42 6 Oct 2019 · 343 MW · 47 7 Oct 2019 · 66 MW · 15 8 Oct 2019 · 66 MW · 11 9 Oct 2019 · 45 MW · 24 10 Oct 2019 · 231 MW · 28 11 Oct 2019 · 312 MW · 54 12 Oct 2019 · 1,540 MW · 27 13 Oct 2019 · 220 MW · 44 14 Oct 2019 · 85 MW · 24 15 Oct 2019 · 177 MW · 33 16 Oct 2019 · 509 MW · 58 17 Oct 2019 · 308 MW · 35 18 Oct 2019 · 111 MW · 18 19 Oct 2019 · 495 MW · 76 20 Oct 2019 · 1,053 MW · 117 21 Oct 2019 · 1,396 MW · 113 22 Oct 2019 · 21 MW · 11 23 Oct 2019 · 2 MW · 2 26 Oct 2019 · 6 MW · 4
9 Sept 17 Sept 24 Sept 3 Oct 9 Oct 12 Oct 15 Oct 21 Oct

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

The weather it burned in

32°high
70km/h · peak gust
31%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.4 mm on 27 Oct.

This area had burned before

3% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 728 ha in 2018.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 17% of the area of London (273 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
    27,237 ha reached on 9 Sept
    0.3 %

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)
9 Sept 28.7 °C 34 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
10 Sept 28.3 °C 31 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
11 Sept 26.9 °C 43 % 66 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
12 Sept 27.5 °C 53 % 66 km/h 0.1 mm High 34
13 Sept 27.3 °C 49 % 60 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
14 Sept 28.0 °C 45 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
15 Sept 28.2 °C 42 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
16 Sept 27.9 °C 50 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
17 Sept 28.8 °C 46 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
18 Sept 29.6 °C 38 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
19 Sept 28.9 °C 48 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
20 Sept 28.1 °C 55 % 60 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
21 Sept 29.0 °C 54 % 61 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
22 Sept 29.7 °C 49 % 63 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
23 Sept 29.2 °C 53 % 62 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
24 Sept 29.2 °C 48 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
25 Sept 29.2 °C 50 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
26 Sept 28.2 °C 56 % 66 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
27 Sept 28.4 °C 55 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
28 Sept 30.5 °C 48 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
29 Sept 30.2 °C 53 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
30 Sept 28.7 °C 62 % 59 km/h 0.4 mm High 28
1 Oct 30.4 °C 52 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
2 Oct 29.1 °C 55 % 64 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
3 Oct 29.8 °C 48 % 70 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
4 Oct 29.8 °C 47 % 61 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
5 Oct 29.9 °C 45 % 61 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
6 Oct 30.9 °C 49 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
7 Oct 29.2 °C 52 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
8 Oct 29.4 °C 47 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
9 Oct 29.8 °C 43 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
10 Oct 31.0 °C 41 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
11 Oct 30.2 °C 47 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
12 Oct 31.5 °C 48 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
13 Oct 31.8 °C 43 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
14 Oct 30.6 °C 47 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
15 Oct 29.3 °C 47 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
16 Oct 30.1 °C 45 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
17 Oct 30.6 °C 47 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
18 Oct 29.7 °C 52 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
19 Oct 30.7 °C 43 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
20 Oct 31.1 °C 43 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
21 Oct 30.2 °C 48 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
22 Oct 29.8 °C 54 % 61 km/h 0.4 mm High 36
23 Oct 30.1 °C 51 % 66 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
24 Oct 30.1 °C 57 % 59 km/h 0.7 mm High 27
25 Oct 30.4 °C 59 % 45 km/h 1.9 mm Moderate 13
26 Oct 31.8 °C 56 % 43 km/h 2.6 mm Low 11
27 Oct after 30.5 °C 61 % 52 km/h 1.4 mm Moderate 14

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 2 Sept 2019
After · 2 Nov 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 · 1,229Every 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?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 9 September 2019 to 26 October 2019 (48 days). The perimeter dates it from 9 September 2019 to 23 October 2019.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 27,252 hectares (272.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Cook (27,237 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 31.8 °C, humidity dropped to 31 % and gusts hit 70 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 39, 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; 3 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 9 September 2019 to 23 October 2019. 1,229 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.