Skip to content
worldfires
en
AU · Australia · →

Cook fire, 22 September 2023 Cook

Out · last detection 5 Oct 2023, 04:20 UTC

The fire started on 22 September 2023 in Cook, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 46,086 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 116th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1742 with a page). Number 103 in Australia in 2023, of 1237.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Cook · 2016Cook · 2020Cook · 2020Cook · 2016

Burnt area
46,086ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
14days
22 Sept 2023 – 5 Oct 2023
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
22 Sept
2023
Heat detections
1,489
in a single hotspot: 299 MW
Danger at start
53
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
1.2GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 22 Sept5 Oct
5 Oct 2023

How it evolved, day by day

22 Sept 2023 · 18 MW · 11 23 Sept 2023 · 2,831 MW · 169 24 Sept 2023 · 1,061 MW · 278 25 Sept 2023 · 621 MW · 143 26 Sept 2023 · 3,941 MW · 304 27 Sept 2023 · 4,932 MW · 196 28 Sept 2023 · 1,297 MW · 158 29 Sept 2023 · 739 MW · 90 30 Sept 2023 · 1,240 MW · 83 1 Oct 2023 · 131 MW · 31 2 Oct 2023 · 64 MW · 15 3 Oct 2023 · 24 MW · 3 4 Oct 2023 · 30 MW · 7 5 Oct 2023 · 11 MW · 1
22 Sept 24 Sept 26 Sept 27 Sept 28 Sept 30 Sept 2 Oct 4 Oct

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

The weather it burned in

37°high
55km/h · peak gust
16%lowest humidity

It had gone 13 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

71% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 17,360 ha in 2016, 3,394 ha in 2017, 4,770 ha in 2018, 6,564 ha in 2019, 7,219 ha in 2020, 485 ha in 2021, 7,130 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 32,726 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 29% of the area of London (461 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

  1. Cook where it started
    46,703 ha reached on 22 Sept
    0.4 %

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.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2025
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, satellite-based estimate).

This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu

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)
22 Sept 36.8 °C 16 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
23 Sept 33.9 °C 24 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
24 Sept 33.5 °C 25 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
25 Sept 32.7 °C 33 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
26 Sept 33.4 °C 29 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
27 Sept 34.3 °C 27 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
28 Sept 33.6 °C 30 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
29 Sept 33.8 °C 28 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
30 Sept 34.0 °C 28 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
1 Oct 35.3 °C 27 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
2 Oct 34.6 °C 31 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
3 Oct 34.4 °C 35 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
4 Oct 36.1 °C 30 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
5 Oct 36.9 °C 27 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
6 Oct after 36.3 °C 27 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
7 Oct after 34.7 °C 30 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
8 Oct after 34.7 °C 23 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
9 Oct after 34.3 °C 27 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
10 Oct after 36.3 °C 22 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
11 Oct after 36.7 °C 24 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
12 Oct after 35.6 °C 29 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
13 Oct after 37.3 °C 14 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
14 Oct after 38.2 °C 15 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
15 Oct after 36.5 °C 20 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 15 Sept 2023
After · 12 Oct 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 25 September 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
PM1025 µg/m³
Optical depth0.47
202122232425262728293012345
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 · 1,489Every 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?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 22 September 2023 to 5 October 2023 (14 days). The perimeter dates it from 22 September 2023 to 2 October 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 46,086 hectares (460.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Cook (46,703 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.9 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 55, 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 · 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.

RSS Changes to this page

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?

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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 22 September 2023 to 2 October 2023. 1,489 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.
  • Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

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.