Cook fire, 21 July 2024 Cook
The fire started on 21 July 2024 in Cook, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,063 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 998th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 340 in Australia in 2024, of 638.
- Burnt area
- 8,063ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 2days
- 21 Jul 2024 – 22 Jul 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- local government areas
- Started on
- 21 Jul
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 243
- in a single hotspot: 166 MW
- Danger at start
- 33
- High · FWI index
- Energy released
- 4.4GW
- 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 5 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
96% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 907 ha in 2017, 5,364 ha in 2018, 1 ha in 2019, 5,675 ha in 2020, 172 ha in 2021, 408 ha in 2022, 1,078 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 7,777 ha that had burned before.
- 5,612 ha Cook fire, September 2020 132,556 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 4,403 ha Cook fire, July 2018 20,890 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 287 ha Cook fire, September 2023 101,112 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 39 ha Cook fire, October 2018 18,122 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
What happened to each town
-
Cook where it started8,076 ha reached on 21 Jul0.1 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 17 Jul | 27.7 °C | 23 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 18 Jul | 27.4 °C | 40 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 19 Jul | 26.5 °C | 44 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 20 Jul | 27.2 °C | 46 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 21 Jul | 27.3 °C | 44 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 22 Jul | 26.1 °C | 55 % | 55 km/h | 0.4 mm | High 29 |
| 23 Jul after | 26.4 °C | 58 % | 57 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 29 |
| 24 Jul after | 26.8 °C | 65 % | 63 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 27 |
| 25 Jul after | 26.5 °C | 68 % | 58 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 24 |
| 26 Jul after | 27.6 °C | 62 % | 61 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 27 Jul after | 28.0 °C | 56 % | 54 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 28 Jul after | 27.7 °C | 57 % | 51 km/h | 0.4 mm | High 25 |
| 29 Jul after | 28.1 °C | 55 % | 56 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 26 |
| 30 Jul after | 25.8 °C | 69 % | 66 km/h | 0.6 mm | High 23 |
| 31 Jul after | 26.1 °C | 65 % | 67 km/h | 0.6 mm | High 23 |
| 1 Aug after | 27.2 °C | 60 % | 62 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
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 23 July 2024 the air beside the fire reached 10 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 · 243Every 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 21 July 2024 and 22 July 2024: 2 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 8,063 hectares (80.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Cook (8,076 ha, 0.1 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 27.7 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 33, 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
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.