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Cook fire, 4 November 2023 Cook, Northern Peninsula Area

Out · last detection 6 Dec 2023, 16:05 UTC

The fire started on 4 November 2023 in Cook, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 32 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 23,715 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 263th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 230 in Australia in 2023, of 1235.

Burnt area
23,715ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
32days
4 Nov 2023 – 5 Dec 2023
Municipalities hit
2
local government areas
Started on
4 Nov
2023
Heat detections
1,209
in a single hotspot: 85 MW
Danger at start
27
High · FWI index
Energy released
7.1GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

6 Dec 2023
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Nov5 Dec

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

35°high
51km/h · peak gust
36%lowest humidity

It had gone 25 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.8 mm on 7 Dec.

This area had burned before

89% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 11,600 ha in 2016, 10,379 ha in 2018, 7,294 ha in 2019, 116 ha in 2020, 1,232 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 21,120 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Cook where it started
    18,283 ha reached on 1 Nov
    0.2 %
  2. Northern Peninsula Area
    5,413 ha reached on 15 Nov
    5.1 %

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)
1 Nov 31.9 °C 45 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
2 Nov 32.3 °C 44 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
3 Nov 32.1 °C 48 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
4 Nov 32.4 °C 40 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
5 Nov 32.4 °C 48 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
6 Nov 32.4 °C 42 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
7 Nov 32.0 °C 47 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
8 Nov 32.6 °C 49 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
9 Nov 32.3 °C 46 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
10 Nov 31.9 °C 45 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
11 Nov 32.4 °C 41 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
12 Nov 32.1 °C 41 % 39 km/h 0.2 mm High 32
13 Nov 31.2 °C 48 % 32 km/h 0.6 mm High 23
14 Nov 31.5 °C 57 % 32 km/h 1.3 mm Moderate 14
15 Nov 31.5 °C 58 % 28 km/h 1.1 mm Moderate 14
16 Nov 32.1 °C 49 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
17 Nov 32.3 °C 41 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
18 Nov 32.9 °C 36 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
19 Nov 32.7 °C 43 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
20 Nov 33.1 °C 49 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
21 Nov 33.3 °C 53 % 44 km/h 0.5 mm High 32
22 Nov 33.3 °C 53 % 51 km/h 0.6 mm High 27
23 Nov 32.7 °C 55 % 45 km/h 0.2 mm High 28
24 Nov 33.5 °C 49 % 40 km/h 0.3 mm High 28
25 Nov 33.3 °C 46 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
26 Nov 33.7 °C 45 % 30 km/h 0.3 mm High 26
27 Nov 33.1 °C 47 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
28 Nov 34.0 °C 47 % 23 km/h 0.1 mm High 24
29 Nov 33.4 °C 51 % 28 km/h 2.5 mm Low 10
30 Nov 33.8 °C 53 % 28 km/h 1.1 mm Moderate 14
1 Dec 33.1 °C 55 % 29 km/h 1.0 mm Moderate 15
2 Dec 34.0 °C 51 % 31 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 20
3 Dec 34.7 °C 45 % 27 km/h 1.6 mm Moderate 16
4 Dec 35.0 °C 42 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
5 Dec 34.8 °C 46 % 38 km/h 0.1 mm High 28
6 Dec after 34.1 °C 47 % 42 km/h 0.3 mm High 32
7 Dec after 32.4 °C 53 % 33 km/h 1.8 mm Moderate 14

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 28 Oct 2023
After · 12 Dec 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 27 November 2023 the air beside the fire reached 26 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak26 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1039 µg/m³
Optical depth0.47
2345678910111213141516171819202122232425262728293012345678
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 · 1,209Every 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 4 November 2023 and 5 December 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 23,715 hectares (237.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Cook (18,283 ha, 0.2 %); Northern Peninsula Area (5,413 ha, 5.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.0 °C, humidity dropped to 36 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 35, class 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
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.

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.