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Cook fire, 3 December 2019 Cook

Out · last detection 22 Dec 2019, 15:59 UTC

The fire started on 3 December 2019 in Cook, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 19 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 16,496 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 400th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 208 in Australia in 2019, of 802.

Burnt area
16,496ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
19days
3 Dec 2019 – 21 Dec 2019
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
3 Dec
2019
Heat detections
579
in a single hotspot: 85 MW
Danger at start
37
High · FWI index
Energy released
4.5GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

22 Dec 2019
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 3 Dec21 Dec

How it evolved, day by day

345678910111213141516171819202122

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

The weather it burned in

40°high
50km/h · peak gust
19%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 18.2 mm on 26 Dec.

This area had burned before

25% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,450 ha in 2016, 2,735 ha in 2018.

What happened to each town

  1. Cook where it started
    16,709 ha reached on 3 Dec
    0.2 %

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 Dec 38.8 °C 33 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
4 Dec 36.9 °C 44 % 35 km/h 4.2 mm Moderate 13
5 Dec 36.3 °C 43 % 34 km/h 0.3 mm High 24
6 Dec 36.8 °C 35 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
7 Dec 38.2 °C 32 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
8 Dec 38.0 °C 23 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
9 Dec 36.8 °C 19 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
10 Dec 35.1 °C 43 % 45 km/h 0.6 mm High 34
11 Dec 38.6 °C 28 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
12 Dec 36.4 °C 43 % 50 km/h 3.2 mm Moderate 14
13 Dec 39.7 °C 20 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
14 Dec 40.1 °C 22 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
15 Dec 36.3 °C 41 % 36 km/h 1.5 mm Moderate 21
16 Dec 37.2 °C 35 % 37 km/h 0.6 mm High 29
17 Dec 39.3 °C 22 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
18 Dec 36.8 °C 29 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
19 Dec 36.7 °C 29 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
20 Dec 37.6 °C 30 % 42 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 44
21 Dec 37.1 °C 27 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
22 Dec after 37.8 °C 28 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
23 Dec after 38.6 °C 24 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
24 Dec after 38.9 °C 23 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
25 Dec after 38.5 °C 24 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
26 Dec after 35.8 °C 46 % 30 km/h 18.2 mm Low 5

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 26 Nov 2019
After · 28 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 · 579Every 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 3 December 2019 and 21 December 2019: 19 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 16,496 hectares (165.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Cook (16,709 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 40.1 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 49, 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.