How long did the Cook fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 16 August 2025 and 20 August 2025: 5 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 5,661 hectares (56.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Cook (5,701 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 31.6 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, 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.

AU · Australia · 2025-08-16 → 2025-08-20

Cook fire, 16 August 2025 Cook

Out · last detection 20 Aug 2025, 03:38 UTC

The fire started on 16 August 2025 in Cook, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,661 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1492th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 965 in Australia in 2025, of 1124.

Burnt area: 5,661ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 5days; 16 Aug 2025 – 20 Aug 2025
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 16 Aug; 2025
Heat detections: 239; in a single hotspot: 70 MW
Danger at start: 33; High · FWI index
Energy released: 1.9GW; sum of detected power

Play back 20 Aug 2025

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 16 Aug20 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

1617181920

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

The weather it burned in

32°high

42km/h · peak gust

27%lowest humidity

It had gone 59 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

77% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,293 ha in 2016, 352 ha in 2017, 72 ha in 2018, 1,145 ha in 2019, 1,116 ha in 2020, 1,080 ha in 2022, 1,126 ha in 2023, 599 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,361 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

Cook where it started

5,701 ha reached on 16 Aug

0.0 %

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)
16 Aug	29.6 °C	31 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
17 Aug	30.2 °C	27 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
18 Aug	30.6 °C	31 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
19 Aug	29.9 °C	33 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
20 Aug	31.6 °C	41 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
21 Aug after	30.3 °C	52 %	53 km/h	0.1 mm	High 34
22 Aug after	30.9 °C	48 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
23 Aug after	33.5 °C	31 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
24 Aug after	34.3 °C	24 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
25 Aug after	31.3 °C	39 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
26 Aug after	31.6 °C	31 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
27 Aug after	32.6 °C	34 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
28 Aug after	33.4 °C	35 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
29 Aug after	34.7 °C	29 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
30 Aug after	33.1 °C	32 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 9 Aug 2025

After · 27 Aug 2025

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 August 2025 the air beside the fire reached 7 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak7 µg/m³

Days over the guideline0 days

PM108 µg/m³

Optical depth0.19

14151617181920212223

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 · 239Every 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 16 August 2025 and 20 August 2025: 5 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 5,661 hectares (56.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Cook (5,701 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 31.6 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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 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.

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