Cook fire, 17 October 2025 Cook
The fire started on 17 October 2025 in Cook, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,950 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 1415th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 906 in Australia in 2025, of 1124.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Cook · 2023Cook · 2021Cook · 2019Cook · 2017
- Burnt area
- 5,950ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 14days
- 17 Oct 2025 – 30 Oct 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- local government areas
- Started on
- 17 Oct
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 136
- in a single hotspot: 47 MW
- Danger at start
- 15
- Moderate · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 91MW
- 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 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.3 mm on 2 Nov.
This area had burned before
100% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,911 ha in 2016, 688 ha in 2017, 622 ha in 2018, 4,408 ha in 2019, 65 ha in 2020, 4,720 ha in 2021, 1,525 ha in 2022, 5,781 ha in 2023, 1,604 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,966 ha that had burned before.
- 5,433 ha Cook fire, September 2023 49,258 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 4,597 ha Cook fire, October 2021 41,081 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,569 ha Cook fire, September 2019 100,501 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 688 ha Cook fire, September 2017 13,971 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 started5,942 ha reached on 14 Oct0.1 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 14 Oct | 35.5 °C | 44 % | 50 km/h | 1.5 mm | Moderate 15 |
| 15 Oct | 34.3 °C | 42 % | 60 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 16 Oct | 32.5 °C | 58 % | 57 km/h | 1.7 mm | Moderate 13 |
| 17 Oct | 33.7 °C | 47 % | 61 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 18 Oct | 33.0 °C | 51 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 19 Oct | 34.6 °C | 42 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 20 Oct | 35.2 °C | 41 % | 51 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 21 Oct | 34.0 °C | 36 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 22 Oct | 35.5 °C | 30 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 23 Oct | 34.4 °C | 34 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 24 Oct | 35.5 °C | 33 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 25 Oct | 35.8 °C | 41 % | 38 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 30 |
| 26 Oct | 35.6 °C | 47 % | 42 km/h | 1.7 mm | Moderate 17 |
| 27 Oct | 36.8 °C | 38 % | 32 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 25 |
| 28 Oct | 37.4 °C | 39 % | 31 km/h | 1.4 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 29 Oct | 36.2 °C | 46 % | 27 km/h | 5.4 mm | Very low 5 |
| 30 Oct | 36.5 °C | 43 % | 36 km/h | 0.2 mm | Moderate 17 |
| 31 Oct after | 36.7 °C | 37 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 1 Nov after | 35.7 °C | 40 % | 47 km/h | 0.4 mm | High 28 |
| 2 Nov after | 35.7 °C | 48 % | 48 km/h | 2.3 mm | Moderate 14 |
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 24 October 2025 the air beside the fire reached 28 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 16: 1.0 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 · 136Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 49,258 haCook7 September 2023 · 76 days · 9 km away
- 74,396 haCook29 October 2016 · 45 days · 16 km away
- 100,501 haCook20 September 2019 · 38 days · 18 km away
- 41,081 haCook31 October 2021 · 17 days · 21 km away
- 63,138 haCook27 September 2024 · 30 days · 29 km away
- 38,082 haCook14 October 2022 · 44 days · 32 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Cook fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 17 October 2025 and 30 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 5,950 hectares (59.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Cook (5,942 ha, 0.1 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 37.4 °C, humidity dropped to 30 % and gusts hit 61 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 31, 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
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.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 136 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.
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.