How long did the Cook fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 17 December 2019 and 26 December 2019: 10 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 9,280 hectares (92.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Cook (9,410 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 39.2 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, 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.

AU · Australia · 2019-12-17 → 2019-12-26

Cook fire, 17 December 2019 Cook

Out · last detection 26 Dec 2019, 03:35 UTC

The fire started on 17 December 2019 in Cook, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,280 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 834th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 406 in Australia in 2019, of 802.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Cook · 2026 Cook · 2018

Burnt area: 9,280ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 10days; 17 Dec 2019 – 26 Dec 2019
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 17 Dec; 2019
Heat detections: 375; in a single hotspot: 202 MW
Danger at start: 38; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 496MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 17 Dec26 Dec

Play back 26 Dec 2019

How it evolved, day by day

17 Dec 18 Dec 19 Dec 21 Dec 23 Dec 25 Dec

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

The weather it burned in

39°high

49km/h · peak gust

22%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 5.2 mm on 27 Dec.

This area had burned before

16% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,622 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,489 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 5.9% of the area of London (93 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

Cook where it started

9,410 ha reached on 14 Dec

0.1 %

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)
14 Dec	39.2 °C	24 %	35 km/h	0.2 mm	High 38
15 Dec	38.0 °C	31 %	36 km/h	0.9 mm	High 29
16 Dec	37.5 °C	34 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
17 Dec	38.7 °C	22 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
18 Dec	34.8 °C	36 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
19 Dec	34.8 °C	35 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
20 Dec	35.6 °C	36 %	44 km/h	0.2 mm	Very high 39
21 Dec	35.2 °C	30 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
22 Dec	36.3 °C	30 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
23 Dec	36.6 °C	31 %	45 km/h	0.7 mm	High 36
24 Dec	38.0 °C	25 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
25 Dec	38.9 °C	23 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
26 Dec	35.2 °C	45 %	24 km/h	10.1 mm	Low 6
27 Dec after	33.7 °C	43 %	39 km/h	5.2 mm	Low 6

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 10 Dec 2019

After · 2 Jan 2020

Before After

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 · 375Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Australia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Cook fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 17 December 2019 and 26 December 2019: 10 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 9,280 hectares (92.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Cook (9,410 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 39.2 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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.

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What really happened?

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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.

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. 375 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.

Where it burned