How long did the Cook fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 1 October 2024 and 15 October 2024: 15 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 5,232 hectares (52.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 3 municipalities: Cook (4,190 ha, 0.0 %); Aurukun (689 ha, 0.1 %); Napranum (367 ha, 0.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 36.9 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, class Extreme.

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.

AU · Australia · 2024-10-01 → 2024-10-15

Cook fire, 1 October 2024 Cook, Aurukun, Napranum

Out · last detection 15 Oct 2024, 03:29 UTC

The fire started on 1 October 2024 in Cook, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,232 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 1633th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 593 in Australia in 2024, of 638.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Cook · 2016 Cook · 2026 Cook · 2019 Cook · 2026

Burnt area: 5,232ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 15days; 1 Oct 2024 – 15 Oct 2024
Municipalities hit: 3; local government areas
Started on: 1 Oct; 2024
Heat detections: 212; in a single hotspot: 42 MW
Danger at start: 46; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 155MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 1 Oct15 Oct

Play back 15 Oct 2024

How it evolved, day by day

1 Oct 2 Oct 3 Oct 6 Oct 9 Oct 12 Oct 14 Oct

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

53km/h · peak gust

25%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

99% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,223 ha in 2016, 2,348 ha in 2018, 3,386 ha in 2019, 1,843 ha in 2020, 608 ha in 2021, 1,868 ha in 2022, 3,856 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,165 ha that had burned before.

3,859 ha Cook fire, October 2016 27,363 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.3% of the area of London (52 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

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 started

4,190 ha reached on 1 Oct

0.0 %
Aurukun

689 ha reached on 1 Oct

0.1 %
Napranum

367 ha reached on 2 Oct

0.2 %

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 2025

Built-up area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside 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)
1 Oct	36.2 °C	25 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
2 Oct	35.5 °C	31 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
3 Oct	34.7 °C	31 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
4 Oct	34.4 °C	33 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
5 Oct	34.7 °C	31 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
6 Oct	35.6 °C	32 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 50
7 Oct	35.1 °C	42 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
8 Oct	35.8 °C	44 %	53 km/h	0.2 mm	Very high 42
9 Oct	36.7 °C	35 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
10 Oct	36.9 °C	34 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
11 Oct	35.4 °C	34 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
12 Oct	35.6 °C	29 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
13 Oct	35.6 °C	32 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
14 Oct	35.4 °C	34 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
15 Oct	35.3 °C	35 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
16 Oct after	36.1 °C	34 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
17 Oct after	35.5 °C	41 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
18 Oct after	35.7 °C	41 %	37 km/h	0.3 mm	High 38
19 Oct after	35.8 °C	39 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
20 Oct after	35.4 °C	36 %	36 km/h	0.2 mm	High 38
21 Oct after	35.7 °C	32 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
22 Oct after	36.9 °C	31 %	34 km/h	0.1 mm	High 36
23 Oct after	36.0 °C	34 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
24 Oct after	36.4 °C	32 %	30 km/h	0.4 mm	High 35
25 Oct after	34.2 °C	42 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 24 Sept 2024

After · 22 Oct 2024

Before After

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 10 October 2024 the air beside the fire reached 21 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak21 µg/m³

Days over the guideline0 days

PM1031 µg/m³

Optical depth0.26

WHO 15

2930123456789101112131415161718

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 · 212Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Australia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Cook fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 1 October 2024 and 15 October 2024: 15 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 5,232 hectares (52.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 3 municipalities: Cook (4,190 ha, 0.0 %); Aurukun (689 ha, 0.1 %); Napranum (367 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 36.9 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, class Extreme.
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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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.

RSS Changes to this page

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.

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What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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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.

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. 212 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.

How we build fire pages: methodology ›

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.

Where it burned