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Cook fire, 12 September 2021 Cook

Out · last detection 17 Sept 2021, 15:54 UTC

The fire started on 12 September 2021 in Cook, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,039 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1725th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 457 in Australia in 2021, of 460.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Cook · 2020Cook · 2025Cook · 2021Cook · 2016

Burnt area
5,039ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
6days
12 Sept 2021 – 17 Sept 2021
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
12 Sept
2021
Heat detections
210
in a single hotspot: 59 MW
Danger at start
28
High · FWI index
Average daily power
193MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 12 Sept17 Sept
17 Sept 2021

How it evolved, day by day

12 Sept 2021 · 8 MW · 7 13 Sept 2021 · 384 MW · 55 14 Sept 2021 · 554 MW · 65 15 Sept 2021 · 130 MW · 24 16 Sept 2021 · 60 MW · 14 17 Sept 2021 · 24 MW · 7
12 Sept 13 Sept 14 Sept 15 Sept 16 Sept 17 Sept

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

The weather it burned in

37°high
48km/h · peak gust
21%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

32% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 381 ha in 2016, 88 ha in 2017, 550 ha in 2019, 628 ha in 2020.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.2% of the area of London (50 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

  1. Cook where it started
    5,079 ha reached on 6 Sept
    0.0 %

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)
12 Sept 33.9 °C 40 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
13 Sept 36.2 °C 34 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
14 Sept 36.8 °C 28 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
15 Sept 35.7 °C 24 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
16 Sept 35.1 °C 21 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
17 Sept 33.8 °C 25 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
18 Sept after 32.4 °C 28 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
19 Sept after 33.4 °C 31 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
20 Sept after 35.8 °C 22 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
21 Sept after 35.9 °C 17 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
22 Sept after 34.3 °C 18 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
23 Sept after 32.3 °C 23 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
24 Sept after 34.4 °C 27 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
25 Sept after 32.1 °C 41 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
26 Sept after 35.1 °C 37 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
27 Sept after 36.1 °C 26 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 5 Sept 2021
After · 24 Sept 2021

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 · 210Every 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 12 September 2021 and 17 September 2021: 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 5,039 hectares (50.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Cook (5,079 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.8 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 48 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
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.

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. 210 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.