How long did the Cook fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 7 December 2025 and 16 December 2025: 10 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 6,623 hectares (66.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Cook (6,732 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 39.0 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 27, 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 · 2025-12-07 → 2025-12-16

Cook fire, 7 December 2025 Cook

Out · last detection 16 Dec 2025, 03:28 UTC

The fire started on 7 December 2025 in Cook, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,623 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1231th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 792 in Australia in 2025, of 1124.

The power measured by the satellite is low (19.8 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Burnt area: 6,623ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 10days; 7 Dec 2025 – 16 Dec 2025
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 7 Dec; 2025
Heat detections: 128; in a single hotspot: 20 MW
Danger at start: 14; Moderate · FWI index
Energy released: 710MW; sum of detected power

Play back 16 Dec 2025

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 7 Dec16 Dec

How it evolved, day by day

7810111213141516

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

The weather it burned in

39°high

53km/h · peak gust

24%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 11.4 mm on 22 Dec.

This area had burned before

70% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 209 ha in 2016, 2,315 ha in 2017, 1,632 ha in 2018, 304 ha in 2019, 219 ha in 2020, 1,639 ha in 2022, 23 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,636 ha that had burned before.

1,632 ha Cook fire, October 2018 35,382 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

What happened to each town

Cook where it started

6,732 ha reached on 7 Dec

0.1 %

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)
7 Dec	37.1 °C	26 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 14
8 Dec	36.1 °C	28 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 16
9 Dec	36.3 °C	30 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
10 Dec	37.6 °C	26 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
11 Dec	37.0 °C	30 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
12 Dec	37.5 °C	24 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
13 Dec	36.9 °C	30 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
14 Dec	37.7 °C	26 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
15 Dec	39.0 °C	24 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
16 Dec	37.7 °C	33 %	36 km/h	0.4 mm	High 25
17 Dec after	35.7 °C	45 %	53 km/h	7.2 mm	Very low 5
18 Dec after	35.4 °C	45 %	49 km/h	6.3 mm	Very low 4
19 Dec after	36.3 °C	38 %	40 km/h	0.1 mm	Moderate 12
20 Dec after	37.1 °C	32 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 17
21 Dec after	36.8 °C	36 %	36 km/h	0.8 mm	Moderate 16
22 Dec after	37.0 °C	41 %	33 km/h	11.4 mm	Very low 2

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 30 Nov 2025

After · 23 Dec 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 18 December 2025 the air beside the fire reached 9 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak9 µg/m³

Days over the guideline0 days

PM1010 µg/m³

Optical depth0.27

5678910111213141516171819

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 · 128Every 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 7 December 2025 and 16 December 2025: 10 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 6,623 hectares (66.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Cook (6,732 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 39.0 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 27, 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