Cook fire, 9 October 2025 Cook, Carpentaria
The fire started on 9 October 2025 in Cook, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 31 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 296,654 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
This page is probably a fire complex, not a single fire. GWIS merges into one perimeter the fires that touch over weeks, which in large burning seasons can join dozens of separate fires. The total area is reliable; the origin and dates refer to the whole complex.
Other fire pages in the same area and on the same dates:
It is the 3th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1742 with a page). Number 5 in Australia in 2025, of 1124.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Cook · 2017Cook · 2024Cook · 2016Cook · 2021
- Burnt area
- 296,654ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 31days
- 9 Oct 2025 – 8 Nov 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- local government areas
- Started on
- 9 Oct
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 9,073
- in a single hotspot: 211 MW
- Danger at start
- 42
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 2.6GW
- 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 15 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 5.4 mm on 11 Nov.
This area had burned before
83% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 77,345 ha in 2016, 51,957 ha in 2017, 36,708 ha in 2018, 43,862 ha in 2019, 19,493 ha in 2020, 73,134 ha in 2021, 70,062 ha in 2022, 15,894 ha in 2023, 65,748 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 244,968 ha that had burned before.
- 34,846 ha Cook fire, December 2017 48,841 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 33,810 ha Cook fire, July 2024 71,520 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 27,603 ha Cook fire, October 2016 47,093 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 22,921 ha Cook fire, October 2021 35,670 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 16,781 ha Cook fire, December 2019 33,827 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 10,975 ha Cook fire, September 2018 12,601 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 7,985 ha Cook fire, November 2022 9,028 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 7,672 ha Cook fire, July 2022 9,706 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 started299,135 ha reached on 9 Oct2.8 %
-
2,036 ha reached on 21 Oct0.0 %
Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance runs from the point marking the centre of each area to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2025Inside the perimeter there were about 0.29 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, satellite-based estimate).
This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.
Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9 Oct | 37.5 °C | 34 % | 41 km/h | 0.2 mm | Very high 42 |
| 10 Oct | 38.5 °C | 29 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 11 Oct | 36.4 °C | 24 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 12 Oct | 36.9 °C | 29 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 13 Oct | 38.1 °C | 29 % | 38 km/h | 0.6 mm | Very high 43 |
| 14 Oct | 35.8 °C | 42 % | 41 km/h | 2.7 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 15 Oct | 36.5 °C | 30 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 16 Oct | 36.2 °C | 36 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 17 Oct | 37.4 °C | 26 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 18 Oct | 37.8 °C | 20 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 19 Oct | 39.6 °C | 13 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 59 |
| 20 Oct | 37.9 °C | 18 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 21 Oct | 37.2 °C | 26 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 22 Oct | 36.9 °C | 22 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 23 Oct | 37.4 °C | 25 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 24 Oct | 37.3 °C | 25 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 25 Oct | 37.3 °C | 29 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 26 Oct | 38.5 °C | 26 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 27 Oct | 38.4 °C | 25 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 28 Oct | 38.5 °C | 29 % | 28 km/h | 0.1 mm | Very high 44 |
| 29 Oct | 38.2 °C | 32 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 30 Oct | 38.0 °C | 33 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 31 Oct | 37.0 °C | 38 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 1 Nov | 38.8 °C | 26 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 2 Nov | 39.1 °C | 23 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 3 Nov | 36.0 °C | 34 % | 34 km/h | 0.3 mm | Very high 42 |
| 4 Nov | 37.5 °C | 30 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 5 Nov | 37.1 °C | 32 % | 36 km/h | 0.4 mm | Very high 43 |
| 6 Nov | 37.3 °C | 31 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 7 Nov | 37.1 °C | 29 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 8 Nov | 36.7 °C | 33 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 9 Nov after | 36.0 °C | 36 % | 29 km/h | 0.1 mm | Very high 39 |
| 10 Nov after | 37.8 °C | 31 % | 26 km/h | 0.7 mm | High 37 |
| 11 Nov after | 37.6 °C | 35 % | 30 km/h | 5.4 mm | Moderate 16 |
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 101 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 39: 2.6 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 · 9,073Every 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?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 9 October 2025 to 8 November 2025 (31 days). The perimeter dates it from 13 October 2025 to 8 November 2025.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 296,654 hectares (2,966.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Cook (299,135 ha, 2.8 %); Carpentaria (2,036 ha, 0.0 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 39.6 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 59, 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›
Satellite cross-check
History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Start date: 13 October 2025 → 9 October 2025.
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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 13 October 2025 to 8 November 2025. 9,073 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.
- Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
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.