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Cook fire, 10 August 2023 Cook

Out · last detection 11 Sept 2023, 16:19 UTC

The fire started on 10 August 2023 in Cook, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 32 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 12,971 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 562th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 424 in Australia in 2023, of 1235.

Burnt area
12,971ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
32days
10 Aug 2023 – 10 Sept 2023
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
10 Aug
2023
Heat detections
508
in a single hotspot: 35 MW
Danger at start
42
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
1.8GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

11 Sept 2023
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 10 Aug10 Sept

How it evolved, day by day

101112131415161718192021222324252627282930311234567891011

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

The weather it burned in

35°high
54km/h · peak gust
21%lowest humidity

It had gone 31 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

79% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,895 ha in 2016, 15 ha in 2017, 7,616 ha in 2018, 2,173 ha in 2019, 51 ha in 2020, 491 ha in 2021, 125 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 10,237 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Cook where it started
    13,120 ha reached on 4 Aug
    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)
4 Aug 31.0 °C 32 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
5 Aug 29.2 °C 38 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
6 Aug 29.9 °C 31 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
7 Aug 30.7 °C 31 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
8 Aug 30.9 °C 32 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
9 Aug 31.0 °C 32 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
10 Aug 29.0 °C 38 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
11 Aug 31.6 °C 29 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
12 Aug 31.1 °C 33 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
13 Aug 31.2 °C 29 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
14 Aug 32.5 °C 23 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
15 Aug 31.6 °C 27 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
16 Aug 32.2 °C 24 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
17 Aug 32.0 °C 29 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
18 Aug 32.6 °C 26 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
19 Aug 32.8 °C 28 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
20 Aug 31.9 °C 22 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
21 Aug 31.2 °C 30 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
22 Aug 31.9 °C 29 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
23 Aug 32.9 °C 27 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
24 Aug 33.5 °C 31 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
25 Aug 32.4 °C 30 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
26 Aug 29.4 °C 39 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
27 Aug 32.3 °C 29 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
28 Aug 32.2 °C 28 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
29 Aug 32.9 °C 22 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
30 Aug 32.5 °C 22 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
31 Aug 32.6 °C 21 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
1 Sept 32.9 °C 26 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
2 Sept 32.8 °C 23 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
3 Sept 33.3 °C 23 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
4 Sept 33.1 °C 24 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
5 Sept 33.9 °C 24 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
6 Sept 34.6 °C 25 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
7 Sept 34.6 °C 41 % 41 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 38
8 Sept 34.1 °C 45 % 44 km/h 0.4 mm High 38
9 Sept 35.3 °C 35 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
10 Sept 35.2 °C 28 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
11 Sept after 33.4 °C 28 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
12 Sept after 33.0 °C 24 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
13 Sept after 33.1 °C 27 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
14 Sept after 33.2 °C 22 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
15 Sept after 31.4 °C 27 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
16 Sept after 32.6 °C 28 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
17 Sept after 32.9 °C 26 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
18 Sept after 32.1 °C 35 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
19 Sept after 35.1 °C 24 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
20 Sept after 35.2 °C 28 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
21 Sept after 35.6 °C 28 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 3 Aug 2023
After · 17 Sept 2023

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 22 August 2023 the air beside the fire reached 16 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak16 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1023 µg/m³
Optical depth0.29
891011121314151617181920212223242526272829303112345678910111213
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 · 508Every 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 10 August 2023 and 10 September 2023: 32 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 12,971 hectares (129.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Cook (13,120 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.3 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 48, 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
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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.

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.