Cook fire, 8 August 2023 Cook
The fire started on 8 August 2023 in Cook, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,505 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 1540th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 1116 in Australia in 2023, of 1235.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Cook · 2019Cook · 2016Cook · 2019Cook · 2021
- Burnt area
- 5,505ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 13days
- 8 Aug 2023 – 20 Aug 2023
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- local government areas
- Started on
- 8 Aug
- 2023
- Heat detections
- 221
- in a single hotspot: 56 MW
- Danger at start
- 28
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 96MW
- detected power per day, on average
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 5 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
95% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,009 ha in 2016, 4,978 ha in 2019, 253 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,228 ha that had burned before.
- 4,738 ha Cook fire, August 2019 11,217 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,336 ha Cook fire, September 2016 5,557 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 240 ha Cook fire, September 2019 25,979 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 136 ha Cook fire, October 2021 17,076 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
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 started5,549 ha reached on 7 Aug0.0 %
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.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8 Aug | 28.1 °C | 50 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 9 Aug | 27.5 °C | 52 % | 43 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 27 |
| 10 Aug | 27.5 °C | 55 % | 50 km/h | 1.4 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 11 Aug | 27.1 °C | 51 % | 49 km/h | 0.7 mm | High 23 |
| 12 Aug | 27.4 °C | 53 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 13 Aug | 27.5 °C | 50 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 14 Aug | 28.4 °C | 51 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 15 Aug | 27.5 °C | 48 % | 33 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 24 |
| 16 Aug | 27.7 °C | 51 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 17 Aug | 27.8 °C | 56 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 18 Aug | 28.4 °C | 48 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 19 Aug | 28.5 °C | 49 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 20 Aug | 28.5 °C | 34 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 21 Aug after | 27.1 °C | 51 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 22 Aug after | 28.6 °C | 48 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 23 Aug after | 29.2 °C | 48 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 24 Aug after | 29.0 °C | 57 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 25 Aug after | 28.7 °C | 47 % | 51 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 26 Aug after | 27.9 °C | 50 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 27 Aug after | 27.3 °C | 55 % | 54 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 32 |
| 28 Aug after | 29.3 °C | 44 % | 52 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 29 Aug after | 29.0 °C | 46 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 30 Aug after | 28.3 °C | 45 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
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 21 August 2023 the air beside the fire reached 12 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 · 221Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 11,217 haCook16 August 2019 · 18 days · 1 km away
- 25,979 haCook19 September 2019 · 35 days · 13 km away
- 17,076 haCook8 October 2021 · 37 days · 14 km away
- 10,564 haCook1 November 2021 · 6 days · 18 km away
- 49,450 haCook30 September 2023 · 45 days · 20 km away
- 12,285 haCook15 October 2016 · 21 days · 22 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Cook fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 8 August 2023 and 20 August 2023: 13 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 5,505 hectares (55.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Cook (5,549 ha, 0.0 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 28.5 °C, humidity dropped to 34 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 33, class 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›
Satellite cross-check
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.
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
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. 221 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.
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.