How long did the Cook fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 7 November 2022 and 15 November 2022: 9 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 6,426 hectares (64.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Cook (6,519 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 40.3 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 51, 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 · 2022-11-07 → 2022-11-15

Cook fire, 7 November 2022 Cook

Out · last detection 15 Nov 2022, 03:55 UTC

The fire started on 7 November 2022 in Cook, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,426 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1286th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 385 in Australia in 2022, of 566.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Cook · 2016 Cook · 2016 Cook · 2016 Cook · 2018

Burnt area: 6,426ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 9days; 7 Nov 2022 – 15 Nov 2022
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 7 Nov; 2022
Heat detections: 202; in a single hotspot: 82 MW
Danger at start: 40; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 139MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 7 Nov15 Nov

Play back 15 Nov 2022

How it evolved, day by day

7 Nov 9 Nov 11 Nov 13 Nov 15 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

40°high

42km/h · peak gust

21%lowest humidity

It had gone 5 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 5.9 mm on 16 Nov.

This area had burned before

67% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,490 ha in 2016, 220 ha in 2017, 2,650 ha in 2018, 149 ha in 2020, 1,733 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,280 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 4.1% of the area of London (64 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

6,519 ha reached on 2 Nov

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)
2 Nov	40.3 °C	21 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
3 Nov	36.7 °C	31 %	32 km/h	2.5 mm	High 21
4 Nov	38.6 °C	22 %	42 km/h	0.3 mm	Very high 47
5 Nov	35.7 °C	33 %	42 km/h	0.1 mm	Very high 41
6 Nov	36.0 °C	34 %	38 km/h	0.3 mm	Very high 39
7 Nov	38.3 °C	24 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
8 Nov	38.5 °C	25 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
9 Nov	39.0 °C	22 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
10 Nov	38.2 °C	25 %	39 km/h	0.1 mm	Very high 47
11 Nov	38.1 °C	25 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 50
12 Nov	38.0 °C	28 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
13 Nov	39.2 °C	25 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
14 Nov	39.4 °C	30 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
15 Nov	38.0 °C	33 %	29 km/h	7.4 mm	Moderate 12
16 Nov after	37.5 °C	38 %	40 km/h	5.9 mm	Low 9

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 31 Oct 2022

After · 22 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 15 November 2022 the air beside the fire reached 31 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 18: 1.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak31 µg/m³

Days over the guideline1 day

PM1048 µg/m³

Optical depth0.66

WHO 15

56789101112131415161718

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 · 202Every 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 7 November 2022 and 15 November 2022: 9 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 6,426 hectares (64.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Cook (6,519 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 40.3 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 51, 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

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.

Report an error

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?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 202 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.

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