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Cook fire, 5 October 2020 Cook

Out · last detection 29 Oct 2020, 04:01 UTC

The fire started on 5 October 2020 in Cook, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 25 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,152 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 753th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 109 in Australia in 2020, of 320.

Burnt area
10,152ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
25days
5 Oct 2020 – 29 Oct 2020
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
5 Oct
2020
Heat detections
324
in a single hotspot: 81 MW
Danger at start
30
High · FWI index
Average daily power
71MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

29 Oct 2020
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Oct29 Oct

How it evolved, day by day

5 Oct 2020 · 6 MW · 6 6 Oct 2020 · 3 MW · 1 7 Oct 2020 · 15 MW · 4 8 Oct 2020 · 43 MW · 9 9 Oct 2020 · 107 MW · 21 10 Oct 2020 · 12 MW · 3 11 Oct 2020 · 19 MW · 5 12 Oct 2020 · 153 MW · 22 13 Oct 2020 · 27 MW · 7 14 Oct 2020 · 125 MW · 17 15 Oct 2020 · 43 MW · 14 16 Oct 2020 · 16 MW · 6 17 Oct 2020 · 82 MW · 25 18 Oct 2020 · 105 MW · 18 19 Oct 2020 · 32 MW · 7 20 Oct 2020 · 152 MW · 24 21 Oct 2020 · 50 MW · 15 22 Oct 2020 · 44 MW · 13 23 Oct 2020 · 50 MW · 10 24 Oct 2020 · 94 MW · 10 25 Oct 2020 · 74 MW · 11 26 Oct 2020 · 191 MW · 28 27 Oct 2020 · 45 MW · 17 28 Oct 2020 · 196 MW · 27 29 Oct 2020 · 103 MW · 4
5 Oct 9 Oct 13 Oct 17 Oct 21 Oct 25 Oct 28 Oct 29 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

36°high
58km/h · peak gust
30%lowest humidity

It had gone 56 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

93% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,499 ha in 2016, 479 ha in 2017, 6,532 ha in 2018, 7,055 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 9,465 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Cook where it started
    10,148 ha reached on 5 Oct
    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)
5 Oct 30.8 °C 47 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
6 Oct 31.6 °C 44 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
7 Oct 32.4 °C 42 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
8 Oct 32.3 °C 36 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
9 Oct 32.8 °C 30 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
10 Oct 32.4 °C 40 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
11 Oct 32.2 °C 41 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
12 Oct 33.6 °C 38 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
13 Oct 33.1 °C 44 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
14 Oct 32.9 °C 43 % 58 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 41
15 Oct 32.0 °C 45 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
16 Oct 32.4 °C 39 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
17 Oct 32.1 °C 42 % 53 km/h 0.4 mm High 37
18 Oct 33.3 °C 38 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
19 Oct 32.1 °C 49 % 43 km/h 0.8 mm High 24
20 Oct 34.6 °C 40 % 38 km/h 0.1 mm High 31
21 Oct 33.6 °C 42 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
22 Oct 33.2 °C 40 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
23 Oct 33.5 °C 41 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
24 Oct 33.2 °C 41 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
25 Oct 34.5 °C 42 % 35 km/h 0.5 mm High 28
26 Oct 35.5 °C 32 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
27 Oct 35.1 °C 32 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
28 Oct 34.5 °C 42 % 38 km/h 0.9 mm High 26
29 Oct 35.0 °C 42 % 32 km/h 4.3 mm Low 10
30 Oct after 34.5 °C 39 % 31 km/h 0.2 mm High 25
31 Oct after 33.8 °C 39 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
1 Nov after 34.4 °C 34 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
2 Nov after 35.0 °C 40 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
3 Nov after 34.5 °C 45 % 55 km/h 0.9 mm High 31
4 Nov after 34.0 °C 38 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
5 Nov after 35.0 °C 33 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
6 Nov after 35.4 °C 32 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
7 Nov after 35.3 °C 31 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
8 Nov after 34.3 °C 48 % 52 km/h 0.3 mm High 36

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 28 Sept 2020
After · 5 Nov 2020

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 · 324Every 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 5 October 2020 and 29 October 2020: 25 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 10,152 hectares (101.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Cook (10,148 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.5 °C, humidity dropped to 30 % and gusts hit 58 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 41, 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
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.