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Cook fire, 2 September 2022 Cook

Out · last detection 20 Sept 2022, 15:54 UTC

The fire started on 2 September 2022 in Cook, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 19 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 15,800 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 420th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 97 in Australia in 2022, of 566.

Burnt area
15,800ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
19days
2 Sept 2022 – 20 Sept 2022
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
2 Sept
2022
Heat detections
599
in a single hotspot: 50 MW
Danger at start
38
High · FWI index
Energy released
2.9GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

20 Sept 2022
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 2 Sept20 Sept

How it evolved, day by day

24567891011121314151617181920

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

The weather it burned in

38°high
63km/h · peak gust
22%lowest humidity

It had gone 52 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

61% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 7,157 ha in 2016, 2,946 ha in 2017, 381 ha in 2018, 1,689 ha in 2019, 1,187 ha in 2020, 296 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 9,713 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Cook where it started
    16,010 ha reached on 27 Aug
    0.2 %

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)
27 Aug 31.7 °C 46 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
28 Aug 32.7 °C 47 % 53 km/h 1.0 mm High 30
29 Aug 29.6 °C 56 % 63 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
30 Aug 30.7 °C 48 % 46 km/h 0.9 mm High 26
31 Aug 33.2 °C 39 % 52 km/h 0.1 mm High 34
1 Sept 31.5 °C 45 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
2 Sept 33.1 °C 51 % 41 km/h 0.2 mm High 32
3 Sept 34.5 °C 38 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
4 Sept 34.0 °C 31 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
5 Sept 33.6 °C 34 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
6 Sept 34.2 °C 32 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
7 Sept 34.4 °C 31 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
8 Sept 35.2 °C 31 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
9 Sept 34.7 °C 33 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
10 Sept 34.9 °C 32 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
11 Sept 35.1 °C 30 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
12 Sept 34.8 °C 35 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
13 Sept 34.6 °C 34 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
14 Sept 33.5 °C 37 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
15 Sept 35.8 °C 29 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
16 Sept 36.7 °C 28 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
17 Sept 37.8 °C 23 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
18 Sept 37.2 °C 32 % 40 km/h 0.5 mm Very high 46
19 Sept 37.1 °C 29 % 44 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 49
20 Sept 37.6 °C 22 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
21 Sept after 36.7 °C 27 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
22 Sept after 37.3 °C 26 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
23 Sept after 36.0 °C 28 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
24 Sept after 36.4 °C 27 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
25 Sept after 36.9 °C 27 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
26 Sept after 36.7 °C 25 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
27 Sept after 36.7 °C 28 % 42 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 50
28 Sept after 36.1 °C 30 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
29 Sept after 35.6 °C 28 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
30 Sept after 35.7 °C 30 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 26 Aug 2022
After · 27 Sept 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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 6 September 2022 the air beside the fire reached 18 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak18 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1029 µg/m³
Optical depth0.29
311234567891011121314151617181920212223
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 · 599Every 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 2 September 2022 and 20 September 2022: 19 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 15,800 hectares (158.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Cook (16,010 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.8 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 63 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 52, class Extreme.
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.