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Cook fire, 17 June 2026 Cook

Out · last detection 27 Jun 2026, 16:03 UTC

The fire started on 17 June 2026 in Cook, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 22,853 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 275th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 115 in Australia in 2026, of 876.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Cook · 2025

Burnt area
22,853ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
12days
17 Jun 2026 – 28 Jun 2026
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
17 Jun
2026
Heat detections
375
in a single hotspot: 102 MW
Danger at start
26
High · FWI index
Average daily power
297MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 17 Jun28 Jun
27 Jun 2026

How it evolved, day by day

17 Jun 2026 · 3 MW · 5 18 Jun 2026 · 790 MW · 64 19 Jun 2026 · 391 MW · 49 20 Jun 2026 · 24 MW · 6 21 Jun 2026 · 106 MW · 15 22 Jun 2026 · 940 MW · 88 23 Jun 2026 · 292 MW · 37 24 Jun 2026 · 626 MW · 86 25 Jun 2026 · 25 MW · 5 26 Jun 2026 · 63 MW · 17 27 Jun 2026 · 10 MW · 3
17 Jun 19 Jun 21 Jun 22 Jun 23 Jun 25 Jun 27 Jun

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

The weather it burned in

32°high
53km/h · peak gust
40%lowest humidity

It had gone 59 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

80% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,746 ha in 2016, 6,029 ha in 2017, 1,332 ha in 2018, 625 ha in 2019, 5,709 ha in 2020, 2,584 ha in 2021, 7,494 ha in 2022, 1,862 ha in 2023, 4,916 ha in 2024, 1,310 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 18,200 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 14% of the area of London (229 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

  1. Cook where it started
    22,911 ha reached on 17 Jun
    0.2 %

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 2025
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable 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)
17 Jun 29.5 °C 55 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
18 Jun 31.5 °C 43 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
19 Jun 31.1 °C 45 % 35 km/h 0.3 mm High 28
20 Jun 30.6 °C 49 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
21 Jun 30.9 °C 45 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
22 Jun 30.8 °C 42 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
23 Jun 30.5 °C 49 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
24 Jun 30.1 °C 45 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
25 Jun 29.3 °C 55 % 49 km/h 0.5 mm High 31
26 Jun 29.7 °C 47 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
27 Jun 29.0 °C 55 % 39 km/h 0.3 mm High 27
28 Jun 29.5 °C 53 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
29 Jun after 30.2 °C 54 % 46 km/h 0.4 mm High 31
30 Jun after 29.8 °C 57 % 53 km/h 0.1 mm High 32
1 Jul after 29.9 °C 52 % 51 km/h 0.2 mm High 32
2 Jul after 30.3 °C 52 % 45 km/h 0.3 mm High 29
3 Jul after 31.1 °C 40 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
4 Jul after 28.5 °C 54 % 50 km/h 0.1 mm High 31
5 Jul after 30.3 °C 43 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
6 Jul after 29.5 °C 49 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
7 Jul after 29.6 °C 49 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
8 Jul after 29.2 °C 47 % 59 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
9 Jul after 28.2 °C 52 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
10 Jul after 29.4 °C 49 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
11 Jul after 30.4 °C 46 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
12 Jul after 30.5 °C 40 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
13 Jul after 29.5 °C 42 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
14 Jul after 29.2 °C 48 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
15 Jul after 30.0 °C 45 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 35

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 10 Jun 2026
After · 5 Jul 2026

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 19 June 2026 the air beside the fire reached 28 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak28 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1031 µg/m³
Optical depth0.35
1516171819202122232425262728293012345678
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 · 375Every 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 timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Australia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Cook fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 17 June 2026 and 28 June 2026: 12 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 22,853 hectares (228.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Cook (22,911 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 31.5 °C, humidity dropped to 40 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 35, 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

History of this page Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

RSS Changes to this page

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
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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.

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. 375 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.

How we build fire pages: methodology ›

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.