Cook fire, 25 June 2023 Cook
The fire started on 25 June 2023 in Cook, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,080 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 1143th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 855 in Australia in 2023, of 1235.
- Burnt area
- 7,080ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 4days
- 25 Jun 2023 – 28 Jun 2023
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- local government areas
- Started on
- 25 Jun
- 2023
- Heat detections
- 212
- in a single hotspot: 73 MW
- Danger at start
- 29
- High · FWI index
- Energy released
- 1.7GW
- sum of detected power
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 35 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.9 mm on 3 Jul.
This area had burned before
97% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 694 ha in 2016, 1,628 ha in 2017, 2,149 ha in 2018, 2,230 ha in 2019, 2,370 ha in 2020, 4,936 ha in 2021, 1,323 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,902 ha that had burned before.
- 2,104 ha Cook fire, August 2019 5,065 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 497 ha Cook fire, October 2021 66,297 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 275 ha Cook fire, July 2022 5,196 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 126 ha Cook fire, September 2019 14,112 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
What happened to each town
-
Cook where it started7,143 ha reached on 25 Jun0.1 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 21 Jun | 28.9 °C | 47 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 22 Jun | 28.3 °C | 56 % | 46 km/h | 0.4 mm | High 29 |
| 23 Jun | 29.5 °C | 46 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 24 Jun | 29.7 °C | 50 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 25 Jun | 29.1 °C | 51 % | 52 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 26 Jun | 29.0 °C | 50 % | 61 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 27 Jun | 28.9 °C | 48 % | 58 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 28 Jun | 29.8 °C | 45 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 29 Jun after | 30.2 °C | 43 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 30 Jun after | 28.7 °C | 50 % | 51 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 1 Jul after | 28.8 °C | 54 % | 47 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 30 |
| 2 Jul after | 28.6 °C | 53 % | 53 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 32 |
| 3 Jul after | 28.9 °C | 62 % | 36 km/h | 1.9 mm | Low 10 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · CopernicusOn 1 July 2023 the air beside the fire reached 13 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).
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 · 212Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Cook fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 25 June 2023 and 28 June 2023: 4 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 7,080 hectares (70.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Cook (7,143 ha, 0.1 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 29.8 °C, humidity dropped to 45 % and gusts hit 61 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, class Very 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
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
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.