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Cook fire, 22 July 2025 Cook, Aurukun

Out · last detection 10 Aug 2025, 16:14 UTC

The fire started on 22 July 2025 in Cook, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 19 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 17,778 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 364th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 237 in Australia in 2025, of 1124.

Burnt area
17,778ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
19days
22 Jul 2025 – 9 Aug 2025
Municipalities hit
2
local government areas
Started on
22 Jul
2025
Heat detections
745
in a single hotspot: 70 MW
Danger at start
24
High · FWI index
Energy released
3.5GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

10 Aug 2025
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 22 Jul9 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

2223242526272829303112345678910

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

34°high
49km/h · peak gust
20%lowest humidity

It had gone 32 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: 13,395 ha in 2016, 5,546 ha in 2017, 5,237 ha in 2019, 2,517 ha in 2021, 12,224 ha in 2022, 12,595 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 17,748 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Cook where it started
    13,844 ha reached on 19 Jul
    0.1 %
  2. Aurukun
    4,032 ha reached on 21 Jul
    0.5 %

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)
19 Jul 31.0 °C 51 % 26 km/h 0.1 mm High 24
20 Jul 31.1 °C 42 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
21 Jul 34.0 °C 39 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
22 Jul 33.3 °C 50 % 27 km/h 0.1 mm High 26
23 Jul 33.7 °C 44 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
24 Jul 33.3 °C 43 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
25 Jul 33.5 °C 40 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
26 Jul 33.8 °C 40 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
27 Jul 33.4 °C 39 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
28 Jul 33.5 °C 40 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
29 Jul 33.9 °C 38 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
30 Jul 33.9 °C 36 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
31 Jul 33.2 °C 41 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
1 Aug 32.0 °C 46 % 27 km/h 0.2 mm High 28
2 Aug 30.1 °C 31 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
3 Aug 31.0 °C 20 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
4 Aug 30.8 °C 37 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
5 Aug 32.3 °C 31 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
6 Aug 32.1 °C 37 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
7 Aug 32.7 °C 39 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
8 Aug 32.6 °C 36 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
9 Aug 31.8 °C 39 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
10 Aug after 30.5 °C 40 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
11 Aug after 32.4 °C 37 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
12 Aug after 32.0 °C 34 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
13 Aug after 31.1 °C 44 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
14 Aug after 31.5 °C 38 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
15 Aug after 31.2 °C 29 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
16 Aug after 31.0 °C 29 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
17 Aug after 31.8 °C 24 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
18 Aug after 31.7 °C 27 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
19 Aug after 31.7 °C 31 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
20 Aug after 33.1 °C 36 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
21 Aug after 31.3 °C 49 % 48 km/h 0.3 mm High 35
22 Aug after 32.7 °C 42 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
23 Aug after 34.9 °C 29 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
24 Aug after 35.4 °C 23 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
25 Aug after 33.3 °C 34 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
26 Aug after 33.9 °C 29 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 15 Jul 2025
After · 16 Aug 2025

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 5 August 2025 the air beside the fire reached 24 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 18: 1.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak24 µg/m³
Days over the guideline1 day
PM1025 µg/m³
Optical depth0.32
202122232425262728293031123456789101112
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 · 745Every 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 timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Australia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Cook fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 22 July 2025 and 9 August 2025: 19 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 17,778 hectares (177.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Cook (13,844 ha, 0.1 %); Aurukun (4,032 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.0 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 41, 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

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
What do you think is wrong?

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.

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.