Cook fire, 13 August 2023 Cook
The fire started on 13 August 2023 in Cook, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 29,346 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 186th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 179 in Australia in 2023, of 1235.
- Burnt area
- 29,346ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 13days
- 13 Aug 2023 – 25 Aug 2023
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- local government areas
- Started on
- 13 Aug
- 2023
- Heat detections
- 1,167
- in a single hotspot: 140 MW
- Danger at start
- 30
- High · FWI index
- Energy released
- 6.0GW
- 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 37 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
63% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 474 ha in 2016, 6,048 ha in 2018, 5,410 ha in 2019, 11,055 ha in 2020, 944 ha in 2021, 932 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 18,529 ha that had burned before.
- 947 ha Cook fire, July 2018 6,900 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 700 ha Cook fire, August 2019 95,928 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 353 ha Cook fire, November 2016 7,206 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
What happened to each town
-
Cook where it started29,857 ha reached on 12 Aug0.3 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 12 Aug | 25.6 °C | 42 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 13 Aug | 28.0 °C | 26 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 14 Aug | 29.9 °C | 21 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 15 Aug | 30.1 °C | 20 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 16 Aug | 29.6 °C | 16 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 17 Aug | 30.6 °C | 16 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 18 Aug | 30.5 °C | 19 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 19 Aug | 29.8 °C | 28 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 20 Aug | 27.8 °C | 28 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 21 Aug | 27.2 °C | 37 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 22 Aug | 29.0 °C | 30 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 23 Aug | 28.4 °C | 34 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 24 Aug | 29.5 °C | 30 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 25 Aug | 27.5 °C | 37 % | 55 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 26 Aug after | 25.3 °C | 45 % | 56 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 27 Aug after | 27.6 °C | 35 % | 56 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 28 Aug after | 27.4 °C | 37 % | 54 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 29 Aug after | 29.3 °C | 26 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 30 Aug after | 30.0 °C | 20 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 31 Aug after | 30.2 °C | 18 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 1 Sept after | 30.5 °C | 19 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 2 Sept after | 30.2 °C | 20 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 3 Sept after | 29.2 °C | 24 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 4 Sept after | 31.3 °C | 21 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
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 18 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 · 1,167Every 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 13 August 2023 and 25 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 29,346 hectares (293.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Cook (29,857 ha, 0.3 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 30.6 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, 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.