Cook fire, 12 July 2025 Cook, Aurukun
The fire started on 12 July 2025 in Cook, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 11,078 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 673th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 431 in Australia in 2025, of 1124.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Aurukun · 2022Cook · 2023Cook · 2016Cook · 2017
- Burnt area
- 11,078ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 14days
- 12 Jul 2025 – 25 Jul 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- local government areas
- Started on
- 12 Jul
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 449
- in a single hotspot: 38 MW
- Danger at start
- 32
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 149MW
- 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 24 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
100% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 5,482 ha in 2016, 5,346 ha in 2017, 2,528 ha in 2019, 2,496 ha in 2020, 3,323 ha in 2021, 8,366 ha in 2022, 5,852 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 11,076 ha that had burned before.
- 8,366 ha Aurukun fire, August 2022 79,582 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 5,826 ha Cook fire, October 2023 113,118 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 4,157 ha Cook fire, July 2016 6,042 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,020 ha Cook fire, September 2017 9,599 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 50 ha Aurukun fire, September 2017 5,165 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 started8,546 ha reached on 12 Jul0.1 %
-
2,587 ha reached on 14 Jul0.4 %
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 | 31.8 °C | 43 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 12 Jul | 31.3 °C | 47 % | 60 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 13 Jul | 30.4 °C | 42 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 14 Jul | 29.7 °C | 40 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 15 Jul | 30.7 °C | 36 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 16 Jul | 32.3 °C | 32 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 17 Jul | 32.0 °C | 43 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 18 Jul | 33.2 °C | 43 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 19 Jul | 31.3 °C | 51 % | 26 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 24 |
| 20 Jul | 31.4 °C | 42 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 21 Jul | 34.3 °C | 39 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 22 Jul | 33.6 °C | 50 % | 27 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 27 |
| 23 Jul | 34.0 °C | 44 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 24 Jul | 33.6 °C | 43 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 25 Jul | 33.8 °C | 40 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 26 Jul after | 34.1 °C | 40 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 27 Jul after | 33.7 °C | 39 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 28 Jul after | 33.8 °C | 40 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 29 Jul after | 34.2 °C | 38 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 30 Jul after | 34.2 °C | 37 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 31 Jul after | 33.5 °C | 41 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 1 Aug after | 32.3 °C | 46 % | 27 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 28 |
| 2 Aug after | 30.4 °C | 31 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 3 Aug after | 31.3 °C | 20 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 4 Aug after | 31.1 °C | 37 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 5 Aug after | 32.6 °C | 31 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 6 Aug after | 32.4 °C | 37 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 7 Aug after | 33.0 °C | 39 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 8 Aug after | 32.9 °C | 36 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
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 17 July 2025 the air beside the fire reached 30 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 18: 1.2 times the WHO daily 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 · 449Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 53,850 haAurukun2 July 2026 · 13 days · 13 km away
- 28,131 haAurukun5 August 2023 · 46 days · 25 km away
- 79,582 haAurukunAugust 2022 · 33 days · 27 km away
- 113,118 haCook11 October 2023 · 35 days · 29 km away
- 68,368 haAurukun August 2026 · 79 days · 29 km away
- 32,872 haCook22 October 2021 · 21 days · 33 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Cook fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 12 July 2025 and 25 July 2025: 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 11,078 hectares (110.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Cook (8,546 ha, 0.1 %); Aurukun (2,587 ha, 0.4 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 34.3 °C, humidity dropped to 32 % and gusts hit 60 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 36, 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
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. 449 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.
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.