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Cook fire, 7 October 2023 Cook

Out · last detection 17 Nov 2023, 04:13 UTC

The fire started on 7 October 2023 in Cook, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 41 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 116,289 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

This page is probably a fire complex, not a single fire. GWIS merges into one perimeter the fires that touch over weeks, which in large burning seasons can join dozens of separate fires. The total area is reliable; the origin and dates refer to the whole complex.

It is the 27th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 23 in Australia in 2023, of 1235.

Burnt area
116,289ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
41days
7 Oct 2023 – 16 Nov 2023
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
7 Oct
2023
Heat detections
4,699
in a single hotspot: 243 MW
Danger at start
46
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
38.2GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

17 Nov 2023
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 7 Oct16 Nov

How it evolved, day by day

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

The weather it burned in

38°high
54km/h · peak gust
9%lowest humidity

It had gone 18 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.6 mm on 21 Nov.

This area had burned before

56% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 6,836 ha in 2016, 773 ha in 2017, 51,982 ha in 2018, 5,230 ha in 2019, 2,978 ha in 2020, 27,743 ha in 2021, 3,503 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 64,782 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Cook where it started
    118,039 ha reached on 4 Oct
    1.1 %

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)
7 Oct 32.9 °C 31 % 46 km/h 0.5 mm Very high 46
8 Oct 32.9 °C 24 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
9 Oct 32.4 °C 26 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
10 Oct 35.9 °C 19 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
11 Oct 36.0 °C 20 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
12 Oct 33.5 °C 28 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
13 Oct 36.9 °C 11 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
14 Oct 37.7 °C 12 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
15 Oct 35.4 °C 19 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
16 Oct 36.7 °C 16 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
17 Oct 38.0 °C 14 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
18 Oct 34.1 °C 28 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
19 Oct 34.1 °C 25 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
20 Oct 36.8 °C 17 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
21 Oct 36.0 °C 21 % 46 km/h 0.4 mm Extreme 56
22 Oct 37.0 °C 9 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
23 Oct 37.1 °C 18 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
24 Oct 35.6 °C 22 % 48 km/h 0.1 mm Extreme 59
25 Oct 37.3 °C 20 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
26 Oct 38.1 °C 16 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
27 Oct 37.6 °C 16 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
28 Oct 35.8 °C 30 % 46 km/h 1.0 mm Very high 42
29 Oct 34.0 °C 32 % 43 km/h 0.7 mm Very high 38
30 Oct 36.5 °C 20 % 50 km/h 0.1 mm Extreme 54
31 Oct 36.1 °C 20 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
1 Nov 37.5 °C 11 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
2 Nov 36.9 °C 21 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
3 Nov 36.4 °C 21 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
4 Nov 36.0 °C 29 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
5 Nov 37.4 °C 20 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
6 Nov 35.9 °C 27 % 41 km/h 0.4 mm Extreme 50
7 Nov 35.1 °C 30 % 40 km/h 0.4 mm Very high 48
8 Nov 36.2 °C 24 % 43 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 49
9 Nov 35.5 °C 27 % 43 km/h 0.3 mm Very high 49
10 Nov 34.3 °C 28 % 40 km/h 1.1 mm High 38
11 Nov 36.1 °C 21 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
12 Nov 36.3 °C 18 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
13 Nov 34.9 °C 23 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
14 Nov 34.4 °C 25 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
15 Nov 35.7 °C 21 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
16 Nov 36.1 °C 19 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
17 Nov after 36.9 °C 19 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
18 Nov after 37.0 °C 20 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
19 Nov after 34.9 °C 28 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
20 Nov after 36.6 °C 21 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
21 Nov after 34.7 °C 39 % 47 km/h 1.6 mm High 28

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 30 Sept 2023
After · 23 Nov 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 16 October 2023 the air beside the fire reached 62 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 31: 2.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak62 µg/m³
Days over the guideline3 days
PM1090 µg/m³
Optical depth1.86
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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 · 4,699Every 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 7 October 2023 and 16 November 2023: 41 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 116,289 hectares (1,162.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Cook (118,039 ha, 1.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.1 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 64, 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

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.