Cook fire, 2 October 2025 Cook
The fire started on 2 October 2025 in Cook, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 30,479 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 179th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 123 in Australia in 2025, of 1124.
- Burnt area
- 30,479ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 14days
- 2 Oct 2025 – 15 Oct 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- local government areas
- Started on
- 2 Oct
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 826
- in a single hotspot: 123 MW
- Danger at start
- 52
- Extreme · FWI index
- Energy released
- 6.1GW
- 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 more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
85% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 9,418 ha in 2016, 4,657 ha in 2017, 68 ha in 2018, 2,142 ha in 2019, 17,210 ha in 2020, 2,779 ha in 2021, 5,348 ha in 2022, 8,929 ha in 2023, 3,049 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 26,030 ha that had burned before.
- 12,248 ha Cook fire, November 2020 26,854 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,808 ha Cook fire, May 2020 17,794 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,312 ha Cook fire, November 2016 23,185 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,679 ha Cook fire, October 2021 8,478 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 630 ha Cook fire, October 2022 19,102 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3 ha Cook fire, September 2023 46,086 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
What happened to each town
-
Cook where it started30,860 ha reached on 2 Oct0.3 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 Oct | 37.8 °C | 21 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 3 Oct | 36.8 °C | 26 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 4 Oct | 35.8 °C | 29 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 5 Oct | 35.2 °C | 21 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 6 Oct | 34.4 °C | 26 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 7 Oct | 33.4 °C | 41 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 8 Oct | 35.7 °C | 41 % | 53 km/h | 0.6 mm | High 36 |
| 9 Oct | 36.7 °C | 37 % | 46 km/h | 0.5 mm | High 37 |
| 10 Oct | 38.0 °C | 30 % | 39 km/h | 0.2 mm | Very high 42 |
| 11 Oct | 35.7 °C | 26 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 12 Oct | 36.7 °C | 31 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 13 Oct | 35.8 °C | 37 % | 41 km/h | 1.6 mm | High 29 |
| 14 Oct | 35.5 °C | 42 % | 44 km/h | 5.3 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 15 Oct | 34.6 °C | 36 % | 49 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 32 |
| 16 Oct after | 32.8 °C | 46 % | 53 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 34 |
| 17 Oct after | 35.5 °C | 31 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 18 Oct after | 36.2 °C | 21 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 19 Oct after | 37.7 °C | 18 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 20 Oct after | 37.2 °C | 18 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 21 Oct after | 36.6 °C | 26 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 22 Oct after | 36.8 °C | 22 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 23 Oct after | 37.1 °C | 23 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 24 Oct after | 36.9 °C | 29 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 25 Oct after | 36.5 °C | 32 % | 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.
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 10 October 2025 the air beside the fire reached 27 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 · 826Every 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 2 October 2025 and 15 October 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 30,479 hectares (304.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Cook (30,860 ha, 0.3 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 38.0 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 53, class Extreme.
- 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.