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Cook fire, 19 September 2019 Cook

Out · last detection 23 Oct 2019, 03:36 UTC

The fire started on 19 September 2019 in Cook, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 35 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 25,979 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 220th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 121 in Australia in 2019, of 802.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Cook · 2016Cook · 2021Cook · 2023Cook · 2019

Burnt area
25,979ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
35days
19 Sept 2019 – 23 Oct 2019
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
19 Sept
2019
Heat detections
1,531
in a single hotspot: 242 MW
Danger at start
35
High · FWI index
Average daily power
250MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 19 Sept23 Oct
23 Oct 2019

How it evolved, day by day

19 Sept 2019 · 5 MW · 6 20 Sept 2019 · 64 MW · 29 21 Sept 2019 · 339 MW · 51 22 Sept 2019 · 198 MW · 41 23 Sept 2019 · 590 MW · 113 24 Sept 2019 · 73 MW · 14 25 Sept 2019 · 35 MW · 21 26 Sept 2019 · 377 MW · 70 27 Sept 2019 · 283 MW · 90 28 Sept 2019 · 300 MW · 47 29 Sept 2019 · 297 MW · 54 30 Sept 2019 · 1,431 MW · 103 1 Oct 2019 · 1,406 MW · 125 2 Oct 2019 · 64 MW · 14 3 Oct 2019 · 181 MW · 25 4 Oct 2019 · 71 MW · 34 5 Oct 2019 · 566 MW · 89 6 Oct 2019 · 424 MW · 90 7 Oct 2019 · 411 MW · 86 8 Oct 2019 · 204 MW · 58 9 Oct 2019 · 165 MW · 67 10 Oct 2019 · 172 MW · 44 11 Oct 2019 · 255 MW · 46 12 Oct 2019 · 169 MW · 33 13 Oct 2019 · 70 MW · 25 14 Oct 2019 · 40 MW · 23 15 Oct 2019 · 82 MW · 22 16 Oct 2019 · 139 MW · 26 17 Oct 2019 · 106 MW · 19 18 Oct 2019 · 26 MW · 5 19 Oct 2019 · 15 MW · 11 20 Oct 2019 · 5 MW · 5 21 Oct 2019 · 33 MW · 10 22 Oct 2019 · 157 MW · 28 23 Oct 2019 · 10 MW · 2
19 Sept 24 Sept 29 Sept 30 Sept 4 Oct 9 Oct 14 Oct 19 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

31°high
58km/h · peak gust
44%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.0 mm on 25 Oct.

This area had burned before

52% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 13,633 ha in 2016, 649 ha in 2017, 131 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 13,595 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 16% of the area of London (260 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
    26,201 ha reached on 15 Sept
    0.2 %

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)
15 Sept 27.2 °C 44 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
16 Sept 27.9 °C 47 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
17 Sept 28.3 °C 45 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
18 Sept 27.9 °C 46 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
19 Sept 28.0 °C 51 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
20 Sept 28.3 °C 49 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
21 Sept 29.5 °C 48 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
22 Sept 28.9 °C 53 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
23 Sept 28.3 °C 52 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
24 Sept 28.2 °C 57 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
25 Sept 28.4 °C 51 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
26 Sept 29.0 °C 52 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
27 Sept 28.6 °C 52 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
28 Sept 30.3 °C 50 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
29 Sept 29.7 °C 49 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
30 Sept 28.7 °C 55 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
1 Oct 30.7 °C 45 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
2 Oct 29.3 °C 52 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
3 Oct 29.7 °C 48 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
4 Oct 28.1 °C 56 % 52 km/h 0.5 mm High 32
5 Oct 29.0 °C 48 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
6 Oct 29.0 °C 52 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
7 Oct 28.6 °C 51 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
8 Oct 28.8 °C 51 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
9 Oct 29.3 °C 47 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
10 Oct 29.2 °C 49 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
11 Oct 28.8 °C 58 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
12 Oct 30.6 °C 49 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
13 Oct 30.0 °C 53 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
14 Oct 29.8 °C 46 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
15 Oct 29.0 °C 50 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
16 Oct 29.3 °C 50 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
17 Oct 29.5 °C 54 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
18 Oct 29.4 °C 57 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
19 Oct 29.8 °C 50 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
20 Oct 30.9 °C 49 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
21 Oct 30.2 °C 51 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
22 Oct 30.0 °C 49 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
23 Oct 30.2 °C 51 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
24 Oct after 30.3 °C 48 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
25 Oct after 29.3 °C 62 % 54 km/h 1.0 mm Moderate 20

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 12 Sept 2019
After · 30 Oct 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 · 1,531Every 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 19 September 2019 and 23 October 2019: 35 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 25,979 hectares (259.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Cook (26,201 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 30.9 °C, humidity dropped to 44 % and gusts hit 58 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 35, 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

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. 1,531 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.