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Cook fire, 3 October 2021 Cook

Out · last detection 8 Nov 2021, 03:31 UTC

The fire started on 3 October 2021 in Cook, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 37 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 66,297 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 67th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 8 in Australia in 2021, of 460.

Burnt area
66,297ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
37days
3 Oct 2021 – 8 Nov 2021
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
3 Oct
2021
Heat detections
2,241
in a single hotspot: 113 MW
Danger at start
26
High · FWI index
Energy released
15.9GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

8 Nov 2021
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 3 Oct8 Nov

How it evolved, day by day

34567891011121314151617181920212223242526272829303112345678

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
59km/h · peak gust
29%lowest humidity

It had gone 14 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 11.0 mm on 13 Nov.

This area had burned before

73% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 23,238 ha in 2016, 12,302 ha in 2017, 6,833 ha in 2018, 16,518 ha in 2019, 10,094 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 48,596 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Cook where it started
    66,921 ha reached on 2 Oct
    0.6 %

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)
26 Sept 32.6 °C 42 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
27 Sept 33.4 °C 37 % 53 km/h 0.1 mm High 33
28 Sept 32.9 °C 39 % 48 km/h 0.2 mm High 32
29 Sept 31.9 °C 44 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
30 Sept 32.3 °C 40 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
1 Oct 34.5 °C 31 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
2 Oct 34.4 °C 37 % 34 km/h 0.4 mm High 30
3 Oct 33.7 °C 41 % 38 km/h 0.5 mm High 32
4 Oct 35.0 °C 37 % 35 km/h 0.2 mm High 30
5 Oct 35.8 °C 32 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
6 Oct 32.9 °C 33 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
7 Oct 33.3 °C 37 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
8 Oct 33.4 °C 34 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
9 Oct 33.4 °C 37 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
10 Oct 33.2 °C 38 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
11 Oct 33.6 °C 35 % 42 km/h 0.6 mm High 33
12 Oct 34.8 °C 35 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
13 Oct 35.7 °C 35 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
14 Oct 35.7 °C 38 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
15 Oct 35.6 °C 37 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
16 Oct 36.6 °C 30 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
17 Oct 35.6 °C 33 % 47 km/h 0.4 mm Very high 42
18 Oct 35.2 °C 37 % 44 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 41
19 Oct 35.0 °C 34 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
20 Oct 36.3 °C 32 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
21 Oct 34.6 °C 43 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
22 Oct 35.2 °C 39 % 45 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 38
23 Oct 35.3 °C 29 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
24 Oct 33.3 °C 35 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
25 Oct 33.3 °C 39 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
26 Oct 33.8 °C 38 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
27 Oct 33.3 °C 40 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
28 Oct 33.6 °C 36 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
29 Oct 33.4 °C 41 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
30 Oct 35.1 °C 37 % 47 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 41
31 Oct 34.6 °C 43 % 48 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 40
1 Nov 34.6 °C 45 % 59 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
2 Nov 34.3 °C 40 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
3 Nov 36.1 °C 33 % 53 km/h 1.0 mm Very high 40
4 Nov 33.7 °C 37 % 58 km/h 0.4 mm Very high 45
5 Nov 34.7 °C 33 % 59 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
6 Nov 34.3 °C 38 % 52 km/h 1.3 mm High 34
7 Nov 33.8 °C 47 % 48 km/h 0.1 mm High 33
8 Nov 34.6 °C 42 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
9 Nov after 35.4 °C 40 % 44 km/h 0.5 mm High 35
10 Nov after 34.1 °C 44 % 48 km/h 0.2 mm High 36
11 Nov after 34.8 °C 42 % 40 km/h 1.3 mm High 25
12 Nov after 35.7 °C 44 % 34 km/h 2.3 mm Moderate 16
13 Nov after 37.3 °C 41 % 41 km/h 11.0 mm Low 11

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 26 Sept 2021
After · 15 Nov 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 · 2,241Every 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 3 October 2021 and 8 November 2021: 37 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 66,297 hectares (663.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Cook (66,921 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.6 °C, humidity dropped to 29 % and gusts hit 59 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 47, 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
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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.

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.