Cook fire, 27 September 2024 Cook
The fire started on 27 September 2024 in Cook, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 30 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 63,138 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 71th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1742 with a page). Number 16 in Australia in 2024, of 636.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Cook · 2019Cook · 2016Cook · 2021Cook · 2018
- Burnt area
- 63,138ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 30days
- 27 Sept 2024 – 26 Oct 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- local government areas
- Started on
- 27 Sept
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 2,194
- in a single hotspot: 351 MW
- Danger at start
- 35
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 1.1GW
- detected power per day, on average
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 4 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 7.8 mm on 1 Nov.
This area had burned before
98% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 41,367 ha in 2016, 284 ha in 2017, 8,586 ha in 2018, 44,401 ha in 2019, 29,607 ha in 2021, 8,507 ha in 2022, 140 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 61,580 ha that had burned before.
- 35,652 ha Cook fire, September 2019 100,501 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 32,176 ha Cook fire, October 2016 74,396 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 9,441 ha Cook fire, October 2021 41,081 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 8,294 ha Cook fire, August 2018 90,475 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 5,146 ha Cook fire, October 2021 6,774 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 4,761 ha Cook fire, October 2021 5,953 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 843 ha Cook fire, October 2022 38,082 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 494 ha Cook fire, October 2022 6,371 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Cook where it started63,004 ha reached on 28 Sept0.6 %
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 2025Inside 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 27 Sept | 35.3 °C | 33 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 28 Sept | 35.2 °C | 35 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 29 Sept | 34.7 °C | 38 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 30 Sept | 33.9 °C | 33 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 1 Oct | 32.6 °C | 40 % | 51 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 2 Oct | 32.3 °C | 40 % | 55 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 3 Oct | 32.4 °C | 38 % | 62 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 4 Oct | 32.0 °C | 38 % | 60 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 5 Oct | 33.0 °C | 38 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 6 Oct | 33.8 °C | 38 % | 51 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 7 Oct | 33.2 °C | 48 % | 54 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 38 |
| 8 Oct | 33.5 °C | 51 % | 58 km/h | 1.2 mm | High 28 |
| 9 Oct | 34.6 °C | 46 % | 50 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 32 |
| 10 Oct | 35.0 °C | 45 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 11 Oct | 33.0 °C | 43 % | 56 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 12 Oct | 32.7 °C | 40 % | 59 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 13 Oct | 34.7 °C | 34 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 14 Oct | 35.7 °C | 32 % | 44 km/h | 0.4 mm | Very high 39 |
| 15 Oct | 35.4 °C | 35 % | 44 km/h | 0.6 mm | High 37 |
| 16 Oct | 34.6 °C | 43 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 17 Oct | 34.1 °C | 45 % | 46 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 36 |
| 18 Oct | 35.0 °C | 41 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 19 Oct | 35.3 °C | 38 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 20 Oct | 36.7 °C | 28 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 21 Oct | 35.4 °C | 32 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 22 Oct | 34.6 °C | 37 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 23 Oct | 34.7 °C | 37 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 24 Oct | 35.1 °C | 33 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 25 Oct | 36.7 °C | 31 % | 41 km/h | 1.1 mm | High 36 |
| 26 Oct | 35.5 °C | 34 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 27 Oct after | 33.2 °C | 50 % | 59 km/h | 2.5 mm | High 22 |
| 28 Oct after | 34.7 °C | 45 % | 59 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 36 |
| 29 Oct after | 35.1 °C | 45 % | 51 km/h | 1.7 mm | High 26 |
| 30 Oct after | 34.6 °C | 42 % | 52 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 34 |
| 31 Oct after | 34.9 °C | 33 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 1 Nov after | 36.5 °C | 34 % | 44 km/h | 7.8 mm | Moderate 16 |
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 October 2024 the air beside the fire reached 18 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 · 2,194Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 41,081 haCook24 October 2021 · 31 days · 11 km away
- 100,501 haCook18 September 2019 · 46 days · 13 km away
- 37,228 haCook25 August 2026 · 36 days · 23 km away
- 49,258 haCook2 September 2023 · 81 days · 24 km away
- 74,396 haCook29 October 2016 · 45 days · 29 km away
- 90,475 haCook7 August 2018 · 82 days · 38 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Cook fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 27 September 2024 and 26 October 2024: 30 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 63,138 hectares (631.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Cook (63,004 ha, 0.6 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 36.7 °C, humidity dropped to 28 % and gusts hit 62 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, 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.
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
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. 2,194 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.
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.