Cook fire, 3 July 2026 Cook
The fire started on 3 July 2026 in Cook, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,897 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 1182th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 536 in Australia in 2026, of 859.
The power measured by the satellite is low (28.5 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Cook · 2018Cook · 2021Cook · 2024Cook · 2024
- Burnt area
- 6,897ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 12days
- 3 Jul 2026 – 14 Jul 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- local government areas
- Started on
- 3 Jul
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 89
- in a single hotspot: 29 MW
- Danger at start
- 10
- Low · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 57MW
- 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: 1.5 mm on 22 Jul.
This area had burned before
99% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,853 ha in 2016, 219 ha in 2017, 4,518 ha in 2018, 2,827 ha in 2020, 1,929 ha in 2021, 958 ha in 2022, 1,774 ha in 2023, 3,041 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,809 ha that had burned before.
- 4,518 ha Cook fire, September 2018 93,971 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,929 ha Cook fire, October 2021 23,862 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,458 ha Cook fire, November 2024 12,030 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,238 ha Cook fire, November 2024 10,100 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 476 ha Cook fire, October 2020 12,986 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 332 ha Cook fire, October 2016 6,971 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 started6,985 ha reached on 3 Jul0.1 %
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.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9 Jul | 31.6 °C | 27 % | 19 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 10 |
| 10 Jul | 31.4 °C | 31 % | 13 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 10 |
| 11 Jul | 31.5 °C | 27 % | 12 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 11 |
| 12 Jul | 31.0 °C | 30 % | 15 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 14 |
| 13 Jul | 30.9 °C | 31 % | 18 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 16 |
| 14 Jul | 31.5 °C | 26 % | 17 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 17 |
| 15 Jul after | 31.5 °C | 24 % | 19 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 16 Jul after | 29.6 °C | 24 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 17 Jul after | 28.9 °C | 19 % | 16 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 18 Jul after | 29.0 °C | 21 % | 16 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 19 Jul after | 29.4 °C | 23 % | 18 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 20 Jul after | 29.4 °C | 16 % | 18 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 21 Jul after | 31.0 °C | 25 % | 12 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 22 Jul after | 30.9 °C | 33 % | 13 km/h | 1.5 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 10 July 2026 the air beside the fire reached 72 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 39: 2.6 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 · 89Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 23,862 haCook31 October 2021 · 15 days · 14 km away
- 15,158 haCook8 October 2020 · 12 days · 18 km away
- 21,896 haCook24 September 2018 · 12 days · 22 km away
- 26,953 haCook18 July 2026 · 9 days · 27 km away
- 25,297 haCarpentariaSeptember 2020 · 12 days · 30 km away
- 93,971 haCook20 September 2018 · 22 days · 31 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Cook fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 3 July 2026 and 14 July 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 6,897 hectares (69.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Cook (6,985 ha, 0.1 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 31.6 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 19 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 17, class Moderate.
- 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.
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. 89 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.