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Cook fire, 18 July 2026 Cook, Napranum

Out · last detection 5 Aug 2026, 15:31 UTC

The fire started on 18 July 2026 in Cook, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 18 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 11,314 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 652th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 291 in Australia in 2026, of 876.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Napranum · 2018Cook · 2026Cook · 2026Aurukun · 2019

Burnt area
11,314ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
18days
18 Jul 2026 – 4 Aug 2026
Municipalities hit
2
local government areas
Started on
18 Jul
2026
Heat detections
457
in a single hotspot: 69 MW
Danger at start
21
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
191MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 18 Jul4 Aug
5 Aug 2026

How it evolved, day by day

18 Jul 2026 · 5 MW · 3 19 Jul 2026 · 175 MW · 26 20 Jul 2026 · 280 MW · 31 21 Jul 2026 · 12 MW · 7 22 Jul 2026 · 88 MW · 28 23 Jul 2026 · 38 MW · 16 24 Jul 2026 · 78 MW · 45 25 Jul 2026 · 256 MW · 70 26 Jul 2026 · 1,485 MW · 123 27 Jul 2026 · 547 MW · 22 28 Jul 2026 · 85 MW · 10 29 Jul 2026 · 19 MW · 5 30 Jul 2026 · 33 MW · 5 31 Jul 2026 · 135 MW · 11 2 Aug 2026 · 12 MW · 5 4 Aug 2026 · 4 MW · 5 5 Aug 2026 · 1 MW · 1
18 Jul 21 Jul 24 Jul 26 Jul 27 Jul 30 Jul 4 Aug

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

The weather it burned in

34°high
51km/h · peak gust
24%lowest humidity

It had gone 8 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

93% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,576 ha in 2016, 3,529 ha in 2017, 5,979 ha in 2018, 3,194 ha in 2019, 4,507 ha in 2020, 3,196 ha in 2021, 6,326 ha in 2022, 2,228 ha in 2023, 3,251 ha in 2024, 4,865 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 10,568 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 7.1% of the area of London (113 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
    9,789 ha reached on 18 Jul
    0.1 %
  2. Napranum
    1,547 ha reached on 19 Jul
    0.8 %

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 Jul 31.5 °C 27 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
18 Jul 32.0 °C 28 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
19 Jul 32.0 °C 24 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
20 Jul 31.6 °C 24 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
21 Jul 31.8 °C 31 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
22 Jul 33.3 °C 29 % 16 km/h 0.4 mm High 26
23 Jul 32.2 °C 31 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
24 Jul 31.9 °C 33 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
25 Jul 31.9 °C 27 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
26 Jul 32.8 °C 26 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
27 Jul 33.5 °C 29 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
28 Jul 31.0 °C 42 % 27 km/h 0.2 mm High 24
29 Jul 28.7 °C 51 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
30 Jul 31.0 °C 41 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
31 Jul 31.0 °C 32 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
1 Aug 30.1 °C 45 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
2 Aug 29.3 °C 52 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
3 Aug 30.2 °C 41 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
4 Aug 29.9 °C 43 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
5 Aug after 29.7 °C 44 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
6 Aug after 30.0 °C 42 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
7 Aug after 31.0 °C 39 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
8 Aug after 31.5 °C 41 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
9 Aug after 32.0 °C 39 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
10 Aug after 32.2 °C 41 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
11 Aug after 33.2 °C 37 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
12 Aug after 32.1 °C 40 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
13 Aug after 32.9 °C 36 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
14 Aug after 32.2 °C 39 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
15 Aug after 31.0 °C 39 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
16 Aug after 30.6 °C 37 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
17 Aug after 30.7 °C 36 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
18 Aug after 32.0 °C 32 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
19 Aug after 30.9 °C 37 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
20 Aug after 32.0 °C 35 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
21 Aug after 32.2 °C 30 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 37

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 11 Jul 2026
After · 11 Aug 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 27 July 2026 the air beside the fire reached 116 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 43: 2.9 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak116 µg/m³
Days over the guideline7 days
PM10119 µg/m³
Optical depth1.07
15161718192021222324252627282930311234567891011121314
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 · 457Every 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 18 July 2026 and 4 August 2026: 18 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 11,314 hectares (113.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Cook (9,789 ha, 0.1 %); Napranum (1,547 ha, 0.8 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.5 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 32, 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
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.

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. 457 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.