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Cook fire, 20 October 2023 Cook

Out · last detection 23 Nov 2023, 15:09 UTC

The fire started on 20 October 2023 in Cook, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 34 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 30,313 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 180th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 171 in Australia in 2023, of 1235.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Cook · 2016Cook · 2021Cook · 2025Cook · 2023

Burnt area
30,313ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
34days
20 Oct 2023 – 22 Nov 2023
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
20 Oct
2023
Heat detections
1,198
in a single hotspot: 103 MW
Danger at start
49
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
215MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 20 Oct22 Nov
23 Nov 2023

How it evolved, day by day

20 Oct 2023 · 3 MW · 3 21 Oct 2023 · 31 MW · 5 22 Oct 2023 · 13 MW · 5 23 Oct 2023 · 87 MW · 6 24 Oct 2023 · 50 MW · 17 25 Oct 2023 · 117 MW · 27 26 Oct 2023 · 114 MW · 30 27 Oct 2023 · 272 MW · 39 28 Oct 2023 · 366 MW · 32 29 Oct 2023 · 138 MW · 22 30 Oct 2023 · 116 MW · 23 31 Oct 2023 · 305 MW · 47 1 Nov 2023 · 384 MW · 20 2 Nov 2023 · 12 MW · 3 3 Nov 2023 · 233 MW · 49 4 Nov 2023 · 42 MW · 22 5 Nov 2023 · 349 MW · 88 6 Nov 2023 · 363 MW · 81 7 Nov 2023 · 257 MW · 53 8 Nov 2023 · 464 MW · 45 9 Nov 2023 · 171 MW · 48 10 Nov 2023 · 63 MW · 22 11 Nov 2023 · 60 MW · 32 12 Nov 2023 · 229 MW · 39 13 Nov 2023 · 158 MW · 21 14 Nov 2023 · 66 MW · 15 15 Nov 2023 · 63 MW · 13 16 Nov 2023 · 409 MW · 46 17 Nov 2023 · 664 MW · 83 18 Nov 2023 · 942 MW · 78 19 Nov 2023 · 550 MW · 65 20 Nov 2023 · 264 MW · 49 21 Nov 2023 · 38 MW · 17 22 Nov 2023 · 120 MW · 12 23 Nov 2023 · 3 MW · 3
20 Oct 25 Oct 30 Oct 4 Nov 9 Nov 14 Nov 18 Nov 19 Nov

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
50km/h · peak gust
21%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.0 mm on 29 Nov.

This area had burned before

79% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 12,947 ha in 2016, 462 ha in 2017, 652 ha in 2018, 7,177 ha in 2019, 4,058 ha in 2020, 7,592 ha in 2021, 4,333 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 23,863 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 19% of the area of London (303 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
    30,474 ha reached on 17 Oct
    0.3 %

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)
17 Oct 36.5 °C 21 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
18 Oct 34.9 °C 33 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
19 Oct 33.9 °C 36 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
20 Oct 34.7 °C 29 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
21 Oct 35.6 °C 29 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
22 Oct 36.2 °C 26 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
23 Oct 36.8 °C 23 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
24 Oct 36.3 °C 28 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
25 Oct 36.2 °C 25 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
26 Oct 36.0 °C 29 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
27 Oct 37.7 °C 22 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
28 Oct 35.9 °C 36 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
29 Oct 34.0 °C 34 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
30 Oct 33.7 °C 37 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
31 Oct 35.6 °C 29 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
1 Nov 35.5 °C 26 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
2 Nov 35.8 °C 28 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
3 Nov 35.2 °C 32 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
4 Nov 35.1 °C 35 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
5 Nov 36.0 °C 28 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
6 Nov 35.4 °C 31 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
7 Nov 35.7 °C 34 % 40 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 42
8 Nov 35.7 °C 31 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
9 Nov 35.4 °C 32 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
10 Nov 34.8 °C 34 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
11 Nov 35.2 °C 33 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
12 Nov 34.5 °C 29 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
13 Nov 35.6 °C 27 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
14 Nov 36.4 °C 27 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
15 Nov 36.8 °C 29 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
16 Nov 36.5 °C 31 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
17 Nov 37.6 °C 23 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
18 Nov 37.1 °C 29 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
19 Nov 35.9 °C 30 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
20 Nov 36.7 °C 30 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
21 Nov 36.0 °C 44 % 47 km/h 1.2 mm High 30
22 Nov 35.4 °C 45 % 49 km/h 0.2 mm High 32
23 Nov after 35.4 °C 43 % 49 km/h 0.4 mm High 32
24 Nov after 36.8 °C 35 % 42 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 38
25 Nov after 35.7 °C 38 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
26 Nov after 37.2 °C 32 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
27 Nov after 37.0 °C 35 % 30 km/h 0.2 mm High 33
28 Nov after 37.5 °C 37 % 23 km/h 0.5 mm High 34
29 Nov after 38.1 °C 36 % 26 km/h 2.0 mm High 24

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 13 Oct 2023
After · 29 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 20 November 2023 the air beside the fire reached 12 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak12 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1020 µg/m³
Optical depth0.46
181920212223242526272829303112345678910111213141516171819202122232425
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 · 1,198Every 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 20 October 2023 and 22 November 2023: 34 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 30,313 hectares (303.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Cook (30,474 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.7 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 49, 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 · 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.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 1,198 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.