Cook fire, 11 July 2025 Cook
The fire started on 11 July 2025 in Cook, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,503 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 1273th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 823 in Australia in 2025, of 1124.
- Burnt area
- 6,503ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 4days
- 11 Jul 2025 – 14 Jul 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- local government areas
- Started on
- 11 Jul
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 153
- in a single hotspot: 46 MW
- Danger at start
- 32
- High · FWI index
- Energy released
- 1.3GW
- 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 23 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.4 mm on 22 Jul.
This area had burned before
82% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,927 ha in 2016, 463 ha in 2017, 2,003 ha in 2019, 303 ha in 2020, 1,206 ha in 2022, 3,057 ha in 2023, 484 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,338 ha that had burned before.
What happened to each town
-
Cook where it started6,573 ha reached on 11 Jul0.1 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 11 Jul | 32.3 °C | 42 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 12 Jul | 30.0 °C | 46 % | 55 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 13 Jul | 29.7 °C | 39 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 14 Jul | 29.5 °C | 35 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 15 Jul after | 29.3 °C | 36 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 16 Jul after | 30.8 °C | 31 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 17 Jul after | 31.3 °C | 42 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 18 Jul after | 33.6 °C | 37 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 19 Jul after | 31.1 °C | 44 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 20 Jul after | 30.3 °C | 47 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 21 Jul after | 32.7 °C | 40 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 22 Jul after | 31.8 °C | 53 % | 33 km/h | 1.4 mm | Moderate 17 |
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 14 July 2025 the air beside the fire reached 9 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 · 153Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Cook fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 11 July 2025 and 14 July 2025: 4 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 6,503 hectares (65.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Cook (6,573 ha, 0.1 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 33.6 °C, humidity dropped to 31 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 34, class 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.