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Cook fire, 14 July 2022 Cook

Out · last detection 21 Jul 2022, 03:49 UTC

The fire started on 14 July 2022 in Cook, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,083 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1142th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 342 in Australia in 2022, of 566.

Burnt area
7,083ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
8days
14 Jul 2022 – 21 Jul 2022
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
14 Jul
2022
Heat detections
299
in a single hotspot: 32 MW
Danger at start
31
High · FWI index
Energy released
1.4GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

21 Jul 2022
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Jul21 Jul

How it evolved, day by day

14151617181921

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
48km/h · peak gust
28%lowest humidity

It had gone 9 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

83% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,947 ha in 2017, 397 ha in 2018, 3,325 ha in 2019, 513 ha in 2020, 25 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,914 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Cook where it started
    7,132 ha reached on 14 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)
14 Jul 27.7 °C 28 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
15 Jul 26.4 °C 41 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
16 Jul 26.9 °C 52 % 41 km/h 0.1 mm High 27
17 Jul 29.1 °C 51 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
18 Jul 32.0 °C 37 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
19 Jul 31.7 °C 37 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
20 Jul 31.0 °C 42 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
21 Jul 31.0 °C 35 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
22 Jul after 30.8 °C 41 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
23 Jul after 31.8 °C 40 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
24 Jul after 30.0 °C 41 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
25 Jul after 30.7 °C 39 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
26 Jul after 30.8 °C 40 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
27 Jul after 31.9 °C 32 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
28 Jul after 29.8 °C 39 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
29 Jul after 30.6 °C 41 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
30 Jul after 30.4 °C 47 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
31 Jul after 30.8 °C 43 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
1 Aug after 30.3 °C 52 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
2 Aug after 31.9 °C 48 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
3 Aug after 30.4 °C 50 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
4 Aug after 32.6 °C 45 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
5 Aug after 33.4 °C 40 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 29

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 7 Jul 2022
After · 28 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 · 299Every 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 14 July 2022 and 21 July 2022: 8 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 7,083 hectares (70.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Cook (7,132 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 32.0 °C, humidity dropped to 28 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 33, 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.