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Cook fire, 16 June 2026 Cook

Out · last detection 28 Jun 2026, 15:45 UTC

The fire started on 16 June 2026 in Cook, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,395 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1570th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 762 in Australia in 2026, of 859.

Burnt area
5,395ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
13days
16 Jun 2026 – 28 Jun 2026
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
16 Jun
2026
Heat detections
118
in a single hotspot: 46 MW
Danger at start
33
High · FWI index
Energy released
905MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

28 Jun 2026
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 16 Jun28 Jun

How it evolved, day by day

161718192021222324262728

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
54km/h · peak gust
32%lowest humidity

It had gone 58 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

92% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1 ha in 2016, 2,905 ha in 2018, 29 ha in 2019, 143 ha in 2020, 4,406 ha in 2021, 81 ha in 2022, 367 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,947 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Cook where it started
    5,439 ha reached on 16 Jun
    0.0 %

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)
16 Jun 30.0 °C 45 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
17 Jun 29.2 °C 52 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
18 Jun 31.5 °C 33 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
19 Jun 30.3 °C 46 % 35 km/h 0.4 mm High 31
20 Jun 31.8 °C 38 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
21 Jun 30.9 °C 38 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
22 Jun 31.3 °C 32 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
23 Jun 29.6 °C 47 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
24 Jun 29.4 °C 44 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
25 Jun 28.1 °C 53 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
26 Jun 29.4 °C 43 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
27 Jun 27.6 °C 58 % 48 km/h 0.4 mm High 28
28 Jun 30.5 °C 42 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
29 Jun after 28.9 °C 55 % 50 km/h 0.3 mm High 32
30 Jun after 29.0 °C 52 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
1 Jul after 30.5 °C 43 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
2 Jul after 31.7 °C 36 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
3 Jul after 31.2 °C 36 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
4 Jul after 30.7 °C 39 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
5 Jul after 30.7 °C 34 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
6 Jul after 30.9 °C 35 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
7 Jul after 28.5 °C 52 % 51 km/h 0.2 mm High 35
8 Jul after 29.3 °C 41 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm High 38

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 9 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 25 June 2026 the air beside the fire reached 12 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak12 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1017 µg/m³
Optical depth0.18
14151617181920212223242526272829301
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 · 118Every 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 16 June 2026 and 28 June 2026: 13 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 5,395 hectares (54.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Cook (5,439 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 31.8 °C, humidity dropped to 32 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 39, class Very 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
What do you think is wrong?

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.