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Cook fire, 26 September 2024 Cook

Out · last detection 22 Oct 2024, 15:46 UTC

The fire started on 26 September 2024 in Cook, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 27 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,516 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1070th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 377 in Australia in 2024, of 638.

The power measured by the satellite is low (29.7 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Burnt area
7,516ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
27days
26 Sept 2024 – 22 Oct 2024
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
26 Sept
2024
Heat detections
296
in a single hotspot: 30 MW
Danger at start
40
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
1.5GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

22 Oct 2024
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 26 Sept22 Oct

How it evolved, day by day

2829301234567810111213141516171819202122

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

The weather it burned in

37°high
58km/h · peak gust
22%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

84% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,201 ha in 2016, 161 ha in 2019, 4,970 ha in 2020, 30 ha in 2021, 227 ha in 2022, 789 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,321 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Cook where it started
    7,596 ha reached on 22 Sept
    0.1 %

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)
22 Sept 36.3 °C 23 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
23 Sept 35.3 °C 22 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
24 Sept 34.0 °C 29 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
25 Sept 35.2 °C 33 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
26 Sept 36.4 °C 34 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
27 Sept 36.4 °C 37 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
28 Sept 36.6 °C 33 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
29 Sept 35.6 °C 37 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
30 Sept 36.1 °C 32 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
1 Oct 36.1 °C 26 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
2 Oct 34.9 °C 32 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
3 Oct 33.4 °C 35 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
4 Oct 34.6 °C 32 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
5 Oct 34.8 °C 31 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
6 Oct 35.6 °C 28 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
7 Oct 36.8 °C 33 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
8 Oct 35.6 °C 44 % 50 km/h 1.3 mm High 30
9 Oct 36.9 °C 33 % 38 km/h 0.2 mm High 36
10 Oct 36.6 °C 34 % 39 km/h 0.1 mm High 37
11 Oct 35.1 °C 32 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
12 Oct 35.1 °C 31 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
13 Oct 35.2 °C 28 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
14 Oct 36.3 °C 29 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
15 Oct 35.2 °C 35 % 39 km/h 0.3 mm Very high 43
16 Oct 35.2 °C 39 % 47 km/h 0.3 mm Very high 43
17 Oct 36.5 °C 37 % 42 km/h 0.4 mm Very high 41
18 Oct 35.4 °C 40 % 40 km/h 0.5 mm Very high 38
19 Oct 36.0 °C 35 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
20 Oct 35.9 °C 32 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
21 Oct 35.3 °C 35 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
22 Oct 36.7 °C 34 % 38 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 39
23 Oct after 35.8 °C 36 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
24 Oct after 36.5 °C 34 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
25 Oct after 36.9 °C 35 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
26 Oct after 36.7 °C 31 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
27 Oct after 35.3 °C 43 % 58 km/h 1.0 mm High 36
28 Oct after 35.9 °C 45 % 53 km/h 0.7 mm High 32
29 Oct after 35.2 °C 48 % 50 km/h 1.2 mm High 27
30 Oct after 36.0 °C 26 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
31 Oct after 35.7 °C 30 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
1 Nov after 32.8 °C 37 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
2 Nov after 37.2 °C 25 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
3 Nov after 34.4 °C 36 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
4 Nov after 36.0 °C 25 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
5 Nov after 36.8 °C 33 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
6 Nov after 37.2 °C 29 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
7 Nov after 36.6 °C 30 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
8 Nov after 36.7 °C 29 % 35 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.

Before · 19 Sept 2024
After · 29 Oct 2024

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 3 October 2024 the air beside the fire reached 15 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak15 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1025 µg/m³
Optical depth0.32
2425262728293012345678910111213141516171819202122232425
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 · 296Every 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 26 September 2024 and 22 October 2024: 27 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 7,516 hectares (75.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Cook (7,596 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.9 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 58 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 48, 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
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.