Cook fire, 2 October 2025 Cook
The fire started on 2 October 2025 in Cook, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 24 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 79,173 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 54th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 34 in Australia in 2025, of 1124.
- Burnt area
- 79,173ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 24days
- 2 Oct 2025 – 25 Oct 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- local government areas
- Started on
- 2 Oct
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 2,942
- in a single hotspot: 234 MW
- Danger at start
- 61
- Extreme · FWI index
- Energy released
- 22.1GW
- 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 9 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.2 mm on 29 Oct.
This area had burned before
91% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 29,913 ha in 2016, 3,141 ha in 2017, 46,784 ha in 2018, 3,447 ha in 2019, 1,407 ha in 2020, 796 ha in 2021, 16,568 ha in 2022, 16,585 ha in 2023, 1,603 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 72,278 ha that had burned before.
- 44,910 ha Cook fire, September 2018 76,988 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 21,073 ha Cook fire, October 2016 32,998 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 11,478 ha Cook fire, September 2022 15,800 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 9,389 ha Cook fire, October 2023 116,289 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 5,783 ha Cook fire, November 2016 19,008 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,143 ha Cook fire, August 2018 10,884 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 431 ha Cook fire, May 2020 17,794 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 319 ha Cook fire, October 2024 7,196 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
What happened to each town
-
Cook where it started80,264 ha reached on 2 Oct0.8 %
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 | 38.5 °C | 11 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 61 |
| 3 Oct | 36.6 °C | 24 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 4 Oct | 36.0 °C | 24 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 5 Oct | 34.6 °C | 20 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 6 Oct | 35.2 °C | 22 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 61 |
| 7 Oct | 31.4 °C | 45 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 8 Oct | 34.4 °C | 43 % | 53 km/h | 2.5 mm | High 23 |
| 9 Oct | 35.4 °C | 39 % | 49 km/h | 0.7 mm | High 35 |
| 10 Oct | 37.3 °C | 32 % | 43 km/h | 0.1 mm | Very high 41 |
| 11 Oct | 35.0 °C | 30 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 12 Oct | 35.7 °C | 30 % | 44 km/h | 0.2 mm | Very high 41 |
| 13 Oct | 35.2 °C | 39 % | 45 km/h | 1.6 mm | High 27 |
| 14 Oct | 35.2 °C | 40 % | 49 km/h | 5.0 mm | Moderate 14 |
| 15 Oct | 35.2 °C | 32 % | 52 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 16 Oct | 33.5 °C | 41 % | 52 km/h | 0.7 mm | High 31 |
| 17 Oct | 34.7 °C | 29 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 18 Oct | 36.3 °C | 23 % | 51 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 19 Oct | 36.8 °C | 19 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 20 Oct | 36.4 °C | 18 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 21 Oct | 35.8 °C | 26 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 22 Oct | 35.8 °C | 24 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 23 Oct | 36.6 °C | 23 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 24 Oct | 37.0 °C | 23 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 25 Oct | 37.3 °C | 26 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 26 Oct after | 37.4 °C | 25 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 27 Oct after | 38.5 °C | 22 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 28 Oct after | 38.4 °C | 24 % | 46 km/h | 0.4 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 29 Oct after | 37.3 °C | 31 % | 46 km/h | 4.2 mm | High 21 |
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 23 October 2025 the air beside the fire reached 47 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 17: 1.1 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 · 2,942Every 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 25 October 2025: 24 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 79,173 hectares (791.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Cook (80,264 ha, 0.8 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 38.5 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 61, 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.