How long did the Cook fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 30 October 2022 to 17 November 2022 (19 days). The perimeter dates it from 31 October 2022 to 11 November 2022.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 15,036 hectares (150.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Cook (15,272 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 41.5 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 56, 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.

AU · Australia · 2022-10-30 → 2022-11-17

Cook fire, 30 October 2022 Cook

Out · last detection 17 Nov 2022, 16:07 UTC

The fire started on 30 October 2022 in Cook, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 19 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 15,036 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 453th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1742 with a page). Number 107 in Australia in 2022, of 566.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Cook · 2016 Carpentaria · 2022 Cook · 2025

Burnt area: 15,036ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 19days; 30 Oct 2022 – 17 Nov 2022
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 30 Oct; 2022
Heat detections: 502; in a single hotspot: 64 MW
Danger at start: 44; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 177MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 30 Oct17 Nov

Play back 17 Nov 2022

How it evolved, day by day

30 Oct 2 Nov 5 Nov 8 Nov 11 Nov 14 Nov

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

The weather it burned in

42°high

45km/h · peak gust

19%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.5 mm on 20 Nov.

This area had burned before

77% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 8,926 ha in 2016, 2,961 ha in 2017, 3,737 ha in 2019, 447 ha in 2020, 1,052 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 11,608 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 9.5% of the area of London (150 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

Cook where it started

15,272 ha reached on 30 Oct

0.1 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance runs from the point marking the centre of each area to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2020

Built-up area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, satellite-based estimate).

This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned.

Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu

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)
28 Oct	41.1 °C	21 %	31 km/h	0.1 mm	Very high 44
29 Oct	41.5 °C	24 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
30 Oct	39.8 °C	31 %	31 km/h	0.1 mm	Very high 43
31 Oct	40.3 °C	26 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
1 Nov	39.7 °C	31 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
2 Nov	40.5 °C	19 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
3 Nov	37.2 °C	24 %	27 km/h	1.0 mm	High 31
4 Nov	39.2 °C	19 %	45 km/h	0.1 mm	Extreme 56
5 Nov	35.9 °C	31 %	37 km/h	0.2 mm	Very high 44
6 Nov	36.0 °C	34 %	37 km/h	0.4 mm	Very high 39
7 Nov	38.7 °C	23 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
8 Nov	39.0 °C	23 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
9 Nov	39.2 °C	22 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
10 Nov	38.1 °C	25 %	42 km/h	0.1 mm	Very high 48
11 Nov	38.2 °C	24 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
12 Nov	38.2 °C	28 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
13 Nov	39.5 °C	25 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 50
14 Nov	39.6 °C	29 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
15 Nov	38.2 °C	33 %	28 km/h	9.6 mm	Low 11
16 Nov	37.8 °C	36 %	41 km/h	4.4 mm	Moderate 16
17 Nov	38.8 °C	28 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
18 Nov after	39.4 °C	28 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
19 Nov after	39.4 °C	30 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
20 Nov after	39.4 °C	29 %	31 km/h	1.5 mm	High 27

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 23 Oct 2022

After · 24 Nov 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 3 November 2022 the air beside the fire reached 110 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 52: 3.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak110 µg/m³

Days over the guideline7 days

PM10187 µg/m³

Optical depth1.62

WHO 15

2930311234567891011121314

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 · 502Every 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?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 30 October 2022 to 17 November 2022 (19 days). The perimeter dates it from 31 October 2022 to 11 November 2022.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 15,036 hectares (150.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Cook (15,272 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 41.5 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 56, 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

RSS Changes to this page

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 do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

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.

How we know this

Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 31 October 2022 to 11 November 2022. 502 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
We have not matched this page with any official record.
Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.
Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2020, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

How we build fire pages: methodology ›

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