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Cook fire, 10 November 2019 Cook

Out · last detection 10 Dec 2019, 03:36 UTC

The fire started on 10 November 2019 in Cook, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 30 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 14,188 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 500th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 252 in Australia in 2019, of 802.

Burnt area
14,188ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
30days
10 Nov 2019 – 9 Dec 2019
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
10 Nov
2019
Heat detections
765
in a single hotspot: 340 MW
Danger at start
21
Moderate · FWI index
Energy released
7.9GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

10 Dec 2019
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 10 Nov9 Dec

How it evolved, day by day

111213141516171819202122232425262728293012567810

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

The weather it burned in

36°high
53km/h · peak gust
33%lowest humidity

It had gone 5 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 6.5 mm on 11 Dec.

This area had burned before

2% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 273 ha in 2018.

What happened to each town

  1. Cook where it started
    14,160 ha reached on 3 Nov
    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)
3 Nov 30.9 °C 48 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
4 Nov 31.4 °C 45 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
5 Nov 31.1 °C 42 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
6 Nov 29.9 °C 43 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
7 Nov 31.3 °C 46 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
8 Nov 33.3 °C 42 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
9 Nov 33.7 °C 39 % 27 km/h 0.4 mm Moderate 19
10 Nov 35.9 °C 33 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
11 Nov 31.2 °C 51 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
12 Nov 30.7 °C 42 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
13 Nov 30.7 °C 46 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
14 Nov 34.1 °C 34 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
15 Nov 32.4 °C 40 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
16 Nov 31.7 °C 50 % 43 km/h 0.4 mm High 25
17 Nov 33.1 °C 39 % 44 km/h 0.1 mm High 26
18 Nov 33.4 °C 36 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
19 Nov 32.5 °C 43 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
20 Nov 33.1 °C 45 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
21 Nov 32.7 °C 42 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
22 Nov 33.3 °C 38 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
23 Nov 31.8 °C 48 % 39 km/h 0.2 mm High 26
24 Nov 32.3 °C 44 % 44 km/h 0.6 mm High 24
25 Nov 31.9 °C 45 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
26 Nov 32.6 °C 42 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
27 Nov 32.7 °C 40 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
28 Nov 31.4 °C 43 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
29 Nov 31.8 °C 44 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
30 Nov 30.1 °C 61 % 53 km/h 1.5 mm Moderate 14
1 Dec 33.8 °C 48 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
2 Dec 35.3 °C 44 % 29 km/h 1.2 mm Moderate 16
3 Dec 36.0 °C 40 % 27 km/h 0.1 mm High 23
4 Dec 35.2 °C 48 % 31 km/h 2.8 mm Low 8
5 Dec 34.4 °C 53 % 30 km/h 1.1 mm Moderate 12
6 Dec 33.9 °C 43 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
7 Dec 33.8 °C 37 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
8 Dec 33.2 °C 35 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
9 Dec 31.4 °C 55 % 52 km/h 3.9 mm Low 8
10 Dec after 33.8 °C 51 % 43 km/h 1.3 mm Moderate 13
11 Dec after 33.8 °C 52 % 29 km/h 6.5 mm Very low 4

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 3 Nov 2019
After · 16 Dec 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 · 765Every 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 10 November 2019 and 9 December 2019: 30 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 14,188 hectares (141.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Cook (14,160 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.0 °C, humidity dropped to 33 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 32, 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.