How long did the Cook fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 17 September 2021 to 6 October 2021 (20 days). The perimeter dates it from 17 September 2021 to 2 October 2021.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,969 hectares (79.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Cook (8,040 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 34.8 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 57 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, 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 · 2021-09-17 → 2021-10-06

Cook fire, 17 September 2021 Cook

Out · last detection 6 Oct 2021, 03:49 UTC

The fire started on 17 September 2021 in Cook, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 20 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,969 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1009th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1743 with a page). Number 237 in Australia in 2021, of 460.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Cook · 2019 Cook · 2023 Cook · 2021 Cook · 2024

Burnt area: 7,969ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 20days; 17 Sept 2021 – 6 Oct 2021
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 17 Sept; 2021
Heat detections: 271; in a single hotspot: 140 MW
Danger at start: 29; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 87MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 17 Sept6 Oct

Play back 6 Oct 2021

How it evolved, day by day

17 Sept 18 Sept 21 Sept 24 Sept 27 Sept 30 Sept 3 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

35°high

57km/h · peak gust

21%lowest humidity

It had gone 5 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

58% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,654 ha in 2016, 2,266 ha in 2018, 876 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,618 ha that had burned before.

352 ha Cook fire, September 2019 25,979 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 5% of the area of London (80 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

8,040 ha reached on 17 Sept

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.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2020

Built-up area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, satellite-based estimate).

This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned.

Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu

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)
17 Sept	31.4 °C	32 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
18 Sept	30.2 °C	35 %	57 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
19 Sept	30.7 °C	43 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
20 Sept	32.5 °C	34 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
21 Sept	33.6 °C	31 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
22 Sept	32.7 °C	21 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
23 Sept	30.8 °C	31 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
24 Sept	29.8 °C	47 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
25 Sept	31.2 °C	47 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
26 Sept	32.9 °C	44 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
27 Sept	33.0 °C	40 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
28 Sept	32.8 °C	41 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
29 Sept	33.1 °C	40 %	53 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
30 Sept	33.6 °C	40 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
1 Oct	33.2 °C	40 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
2 Oct	34.8 °C	37 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
3 Oct	33.3 °C	48 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
4 Oct	34.5 °C	45 %	36 km/h	0.4 mm	High 28
5 Oct	34.6 °C	44 %	38 km/h	0.2 mm	High 28
6 Oct	33.5 °C	39 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
7 Oct after	34.0 °C	37 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
8 Oct after	33.6 °C	40 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
9 Oct after	33.2 °C	40 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
10 Oct after	33.4 °C	39 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
11 Oct after	33.7 °C	37 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
12 Oct after	33.8 °C	43 %	35 km/h	0.2 mm	High 31
13 Oct after	33.9 °C	46 %	35 km/h	0.3 mm	High 30
14 Oct after	33.8 °C	44 %	38 km/h	0.2 mm	High 32
15 Oct after	31.9 °C	48 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
16 Oct after	35.3 °C	35 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 10 Sept 2021

After · 13 Oct 2021

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 · 271Every 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?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 17 September 2021 to 6 October 2021 (20 days). The perimeter dates it from 17 September 2021 to 2 October 2021.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,969 hectares (79.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Cook (8,040 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 34.8 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 57 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

26 October 2026 Last day with fire: 2 October 2021 → 6 October 2021.

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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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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 17 September 2021 to 2 October 2021. 271 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.
Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2020, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

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