How long did the Cook fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 18 October 2024 and 31 October 2024: 14 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 7,196 hectares (72.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Cook (7,293 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.4 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 57 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 47, 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.

AU · Australia · 2024-10-18 → 2024-10-31

Cook fire, 18 October 2024 Cook

Out · last detection 31 Oct 2024, 03:28 UTC

The fire started on 18 October 2024 in Cook, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,196 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1123th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 396 in Australia in 2024, of 638.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Cook · 2018 Cook · 2019 Cook · 2016 Cook · 2025

Burnt area: 7,196ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 14days; 18 Oct 2024 – 31 Oct 2024
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 18 Oct; 2024
Heat detections: 256; in a single hotspot: 107 MW
Danger at start: 41; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 135MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 18 Oct31 Oct

Play back 31 Oct 2024

How it evolved, day by day

18 Oct 19 Oct 20 Oct 22 Oct 24 Oct 26 Oct 29 Oct 31 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

57km/h · peak gust

26%lowest humidity

It had gone 30 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

71% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 78 ha in 2016, 17 ha in 2017, 1,579 ha in 2018, 3,709 ha in 2019, 320 ha in 2021, 883 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,111 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 4.5% of the area of London (72 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

7,293 ha reached on 17 Oct

0.1 %

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)
17 Oct	36.1 °C	36 %	43 km/h	0.2 mm	Very high 41
18 Oct	35.5 °C	36 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
19 Oct	36.6 °C	31 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
20 Oct	37.1 °C	26 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
21 Oct	36.1 °C	32 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
22 Oct	36.9 °C	32 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
23 Oct	36.4 °C	34 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
24 Oct	37.4 °C	29 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
25 Oct	36.9 °C	33 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
26 Oct	36.7 °C	26 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
27 Oct	34.5 °C	43 %	57 km/h	0.6 mm	Very high 39
28 Oct	35.7 °C	44 %	49 km/h	0.6 mm	High 34
29 Oct	35.8 °C	42 %	50 km/h	0.7 mm	High 33
30 Oct	35.2 °C	27 %	51 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
31 Oct	36.0 °C	26 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
1 Nov after	35.4 °C	26 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
2 Nov after	37.3 °C	22 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
3 Nov after	34.6 °C	33 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
4 Nov after	35.9 °C	21 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
5 Nov after	36.2 °C	31 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
6 Nov after	37.1 °C	25 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
7 Nov after	36.9 °C	27 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
8 Nov after	37.0 °C	26 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
9 Nov after	38.2 °C	26 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
10 Nov after	36.8 °C	31 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 11 Oct 2024

After · 7 Nov 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 20 October 2024 the air beside the fire reached 11 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak11 µg/m³

Days over the guideline0 days

PM1018 µg/m³

Optical depth0.29

16171819202122232425262728293031123

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 · 256Every 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 18 October 2024 and 31 October 2024: 14 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 7,196 hectares (72.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Cook (7,293 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.4 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 57 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 47, 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

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. 256 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