How long did the Cook fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 12 August 2022 and 24 August 2022: 13 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 6,889 hectares (68.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Cook (6,946 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 29.4 °C, humidity dropped to 33 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 32, 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.

AU · Australia · 2022-08-12 → 2022-08-24

Cook fire, 12 August 2022 Cook

Out · last detection 24 Aug 2022, 16:00 UTC

The fire started on 12 August 2022 in Cook, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,889 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1184th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 355 in Australia in 2022, of 566.

Burnt area: 6,889ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 13days; 12 Aug 2022 – 24 Aug 2022
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 12 Aug; 2022
Heat detections: 223; in a single hotspot: 56 MW
Danger at start: 22; High · FWI index
Energy released: 1.3GW; sum of detected power

Play back 24 Aug 2022

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 12 Aug24 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

12131415161718192021222324

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

The weather it burned in

29°high

45km/h · peak gust

33%lowest humidity

It had gone 37 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.6 mm on 28 Aug.

This area had burned before

99% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,520 ha in 2016, 106 ha in 2017, 7,034 ha in 2019, 615 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,795 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

Cook where it started

6,946 ha reached on 12 Aug

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)
12 Aug	28.3 °C	52 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
13 Aug	28.8 °C	52 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
14 Aug	29.4 °C	48 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
15 Aug	28.5 °C	55 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
16 Aug	28.4 °C	50 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 21
17 Aug	27.8 °C	33 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
18 Aug	26.5 °C	45 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
19 Aug	27.6 °C	45 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
20 Aug	28.1 °C	47 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
21 Aug	28.0 °C	46 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
22 Aug	27.9 °C	57 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
23 Aug	29.3 °C	47 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
24 Aug	28.9 °C	52 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
25 Aug after	28.5 °C	53 %	42 km/h	0.1 mm	High 27
26 Aug after	28.1 °C	57 %	46 km/h	0.3 mm	High 29
27 Aug after	28.8 °C	60 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
28 Aug after	29.7 °C	62 %	49 km/h	2.6 mm	Moderate 12

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 5 Aug 2022

After · 31 Aug 2022

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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 16 August 2022 the air beside the fire reached 40 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak40 µg/m³

Days over the guideline0 days

PM1066 µg/m³

Optical depth0.19

WHO 15

101112131415161718192021222324252627

Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 223Every 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?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 12 August 2022 and 24 August 2022: 13 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 6,889 hectares (68.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Cook (6,946 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 29.4 °C, humidity dropped to 33 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 32, 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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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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.

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