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Cook fire, 24 July 2022 Cook

Out · last detection 26 Jul 2022, 15:03 UTC

The fire started on 24 July 2022 in Cook, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,537 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1527th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 482 in Australia in 2022, of 566.

Burnt area
5,537ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
7days
24 Jul 2022 – 30 Jul 2022
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
24 Jul
2022
Heat detections
68
in a single hotspot: 85 MW
Danger at start
37
High · FWI index
Energy released
640MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

26 Jul 2022
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 24 Jul30 Jul

How it evolved, day by day

242526

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

The weather it burned in

33°high
46km/h · peak gust
24%lowest humidity

It had gone 19 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

72% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,449 ha in 2016, 1,446 ha in 2018, 1,852 ha in 2019, 523 ha in 2020, 19 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,972 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Cook where it started
    5,603 ha reached on 24 Jul
    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)
24 Jul 31.4 °C 29 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
25 Jul 31.7 °C 32 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
26 Jul 32.3 °C 31 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
27 Jul 33.0 °C 24 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
28 Jul 31.6 °C 29 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
29 Jul 31.5 °C 25 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
30 Jul 32.3 °C 38 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
31 Jul after 32.8 °C 32 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
1 Aug after 32.4 °C 41 % 35 km/h 0.5 mm High 37
2 Aug after 33.9 °C 40 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
3 Aug after 35.3 °C 31 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
4 Aug after 34.4 °C 37 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
5 Aug after 35.4 °C 30 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
6 Aug after 35.7 °C 28 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
7 Aug after 34.7 °C 34 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
8 Aug after 34.8 °C 34 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
9 Aug after 33.8 °C 33 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 17 Jul 2022
After · 6 Aug 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 · 68Every 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 24 July 2022 and 30 July 2022: 7 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 5,537 hectares (55.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Cook (5,603 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.0 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, 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.

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.