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Cook fire, 22 October 2022 Cook

Out · last detection 4 Nov 2022, 04:01 UTC

The fire started on 22 October 2022 in Cook, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 16,941 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 386th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 82 in Australia in 2022, of 566.

Burnt area
16,941ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
14days
22 Oct 2022 – 4 Nov 2022
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
22 Oct
2022
Heat detections
556
in a single hotspot: 121 MW
Danger at start
40
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
6.3GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

4 Nov 2022
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 22 Oct4 Nov

How it evolved, day by day

222324252627282930311234

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

The weather it burned in

40°high
45km/h · peak gust
16%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 6.3 mm on 15 Nov.

This area had burned before

96% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 12,004 ha in 2016, 141 ha in 2017, 472 ha in 2018, 12,437 ha in 2019, 309 ha in 2020, 9,455 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 16,266 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Cook where it started
    17,198 ha reached on 22 Oct
    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)
22 Oct 37.7 °C 18 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
23 Oct 38.4 °C 16 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
24 Oct 40.1 °C 19 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
25 Oct 39.6 °C 23 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
26 Oct 39.7 °C 25 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
27 Oct 38.9 °C 29 % 27 km/h 0.9 mm High 33
28 Oct 40.3 °C 21 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
29 Oct 40.2 °C 27 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
30 Oct 38.8 °C 32 % 33 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 44
31 Oct 39.2 °C 28 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
1 Nov 38.9 °C 31 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
2 Nov 40.0 °C 20 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
3 Nov 35.8 °C 32 % 31 km/h 1.3 mm High 27
4 Nov 37.8 °C 22 % 43 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 50
5 Nov after 34.8 °C 34 % 39 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 41
6 Nov after 35.1 °C 35 % 37 km/h 0.1 mm High 37
7 Nov after 37.6 °C 25 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
8 Nov after 38.2 °C 24 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
9 Nov after 38.3 °C 22 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
10 Nov after 37.2 °C 27 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
11 Nov after 37.3 °C 26 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
12 Nov after 37.4 °C 29 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
13 Nov after 38.7 °C 25 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
14 Nov after 38.7 °C 30 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
15 Nov after 37.9 °C 35 % 28 km/h 6.3 mm Moderate 13

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 15 Oct 2022
After · 11 Nov 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 3 November 2022 the air beside the fire reached 114 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 55: 3.7 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak114 µg/m³
Days over the guideline6 days
PM10172 µg/m³
Optical depth2.33
2021222324252627282930311234567
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 · 556Every 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 22 October 2022 and 4 November 2022: 14 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 16,941 hectares (169.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Cook (17,198 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 40.3 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 45 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.