Cook fire, 3 September 2024 Cook
The fire started on 3 September 2024 in Cook, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,358 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 1098th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 385 in Australia in 2024, of 638.
- Burnt area
- 7,358ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 13days
- 3 Sept 2024 – 15 Sept 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- local government areas
- Started on
- 3 Sept
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 224
- in a single hotspot: 37 MW
- Danger at start
- 36
- High · FWI index
- Energy released
- 1.9GW
- 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 more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
98% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,740 ha in 2016, 2,301 ha in 2017, 799 ha in 2018, 149 ha in 2019, 3,665 ha in 2020, 5,315 ha in 2021, 4,346 ha in 2022, 81 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 7,227 ha that had burned before.
- 5,315 ha Cook fire, October 2021 66,297 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,407 ha Cook fire, September 2016 41,589 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,194 ha Cook fire, October 2022 8,596 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,694 ha Cook fire, October 2022 6,705 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
What happened to each town
-
Cook where it started7,432 ha reached on 3 Sept0.1 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 Sept | 30.8 °C | 42 % | 62 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 4 Sept | 30.3 °C | 46 % | 67 km/h | 0.1 mm | Very high 39 |
| 5 Sept | 30.9 °C | 48 % | 69 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 6 Sept | 29.9 °C | 49 % | 75 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 7 Sept | 29.1 °C | 48 % | 63 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 8 Sept | 29.4 °C | 51 % | 58 km/h | 0.7 mm | High 30 |
| 9 Sept | 31.0 °C | 46 % | 55 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 10 Sept | 30.6 °C | 50 % | 59 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 11 Sept | 29.8 °C | 49 % | 62 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 12 Sept | 30.2 °C | 49 % | 61 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 13 Sept | 31.4 °C | 36 % | 58 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 14 Sept | 30.7 °C | 42 % | 68 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 15 Sept | 30.8 °C | 48 % | 62 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 16 Sept after | 27.1 °C | 65 % | 56 km/h | 3.3 mm | Low 9 |
| 17 Sept after | 27.4 °C | 59 % | 70 km/h | 0.6 mm | Moderate 19 |
| 18 Sept after | 28.8 °C | 55 % | 70 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 28 |
| 19 Sept after | 29.8 °C | 60 % | 56 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 25 |
| 20 Sept after | 31.1 °C | 62 % | 38 km/h | 1.1 mm | Moderate 13 |
| 21 Sept after | 31.8 °C | 58 % | 35 km/h | 1.0 mm | Moderate 15 |
| 22 Sept after | 32.5 °C | 43 % | 48 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 28 |
| 23 Sept after | 31.7 °C | 34 % | 54 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 24 Sept after | 30.2 °C | 43 % | 59 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 25 Sept after | 31.5 °C | 48 % | 52 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 26 Sept after | 32.2 °C | 48 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 27 Sept after | 31.6 °C | 52 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 28 Sept after | 32.1 °C | 46 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 29 Sept after | 31.5 °C | 50 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 30 Sept after | 31.5 °C | 44 % | 52 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 1 Oct after | 32.3 °C | 37 % | 58 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 2 Oct after | 31.5 °C | 44 % | 63 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
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 5 September 2024 the air beside the fire reached 11 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 · 224Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 41,589 haCook28 September 2016 · 38 days · 13 km away
- 22,589 haCookAugust 2020 · 36 days · 14 km away
- 66,297 haCook3 October 2021 · 37 days · 17 km away
- 16,226 haCook 16 September 2026 · 39 days · 17 km away
- 14,112 haCook2 September 2019 · 17 days · 22 km away
- 21,132 haCook30 September 2016 · 40 days · 30 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Cook fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 3 September 2024 and 15 September 2024: 13 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 7,358 hectares (73.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Cook (7,432 ha, 0.1 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 32.5 °C, humidity dropped to 36 % and gusts hit 75 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 45, 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
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.