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Cook fire, 13 July 2022 Cook

Out · last detection 16 Jul 2022, 03:42 UTC

The fire started on 13 July 2022 in Cook, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,555 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 917th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 252 in Australia in 2022, of 566.

Burnt area
8,555ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
4days
13 Jul 2022 – 16 Jul 2022
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
13 Jul
2022
Heat detections
235
in a single hotspot: 52 MW
Danger at start
29
High · FWI index
Energy released
2.1GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

16 Jul 2022
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 13 Jul16 Jul

How it evolved, day by day

13141516

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

The weather it burned in

32°high
47km/h · peak gust
25%lowest humidity

It had gone 8 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

69% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 385 ha in 2016, 2,909 ha in 2017, 718 ha in 2018, 2,635 ha in 2019, 333 ha in 2020, 175 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,867 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Cook where it started
    8,623 ha reached on 13 Jul
    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 Jul 29.8 °C 30 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
14 Jul 28.4 °C 25 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
15 Jul 27.0 °C 37 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
16 Jul 27.2 °C 51 % 40 km/h 0.1 mm High 28
17 Jul after 29.9 °C 47 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
18 Jul after 32.5 °C 35 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
19 Jul after 32.0 °C 33 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
20 Jul after 31.6 °C 39 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
21 Jul after 31.3 °C 31 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
22 Jul after 30.9 °C 36 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
23 Jul after 32.3 °C 37 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
24 Jul after 30.7 °C 37 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
25 Jul after 31.2 °C 37 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
26 Jul after 31.6 °C 37 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
27 Jul after 32.6 °C 28 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
28 Jul after 30.7 °C 34 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
29 Jul after 31.0 °C 36 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 6 Jul 2022
After · 23 Jul 2022

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 · 235Every 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 13 July 2022 and 16 July 2022: 4 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 8,555 hectares (85.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Cook (8,623 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 32.5 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 37, class 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.