How long did the Cook fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 20 December 2019 and 25 December 2019: 6 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 9,505 hectares (95.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Cook (9,631 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 39.6 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 49 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.

AU · Australia · 2019-12-20 → 2019-12-25

Cook fire, 20 December 2019 Cook

Out · last detection 25 Dec 2019, 15:03 UTC

The fire started on 20 December 2019 in Cook, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,505 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 817th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 395 in Australia in 2019, of 802.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Cook · 2017 Cook · 2023 Cook · 2026 Cook · 2023

Burnt area: 9,505ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 6days; 20 Dec 2019 – 25 Dec 2019
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 20 Dec; 2019
Heat detections: 419; in a single hotspot: 51 MW
Danger at start: 39; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 357MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 20 Dec25 Dec

Play back 25 Dec 2019

How it evolved, day by day

20 Dec 21 Dec 22 Dec 23 Dec 24 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

40°high

49km/h · peak gust

20%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 9.8 mm on 26 Dec.

This area had burned before

31% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 22 ha in 2016, 3,193 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,944 ha that had burned before.

1,907 ha Cook fire, October 2017 10,999 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 6% of the area of London (95 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

9,631 ha reached on 13 Dec

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)
13 Dec	39.4 °C	20 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
14 Dec	39.4 °C	24 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
15 Dec	38.0 °C	31 %	35 km/h	0.5 mm	High 37
16 Dec	38.2 °C	32 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
17 Dec	39.6 °C	21 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
18 Dec	35.6 °C	32 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
19 Dec	35.2 °C	34 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
20 Dec	36.0 °C	35 %	46 km/h	0.1 mm	Very high 42
21 Dec	35.7 °C	29 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
22 Dec	36.6 °C	30 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
23 Dec	37.3 °C	28 %	45 km/h	0.4 mm	Very high 41
24 Dec	38.3 °C	25 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
25 Dec	38.6 °C	26 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
26 Dec after	35.0 °C	45 %	31 km/h	9.8 mm	Low 6

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 13 Dec 2019

After · 1 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 · 419Every 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 20 December 2019 and 25 December 2019: 6 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 9,505 hectares (95.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Cook (9,631 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 39.6 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 49 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

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. 419 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