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Cook fire, 3 September 2026 Cook

Out · last detection 30 Sept 2026, 03:36 UTC

The fire started on 3 September 2026 in Cook, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 28 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 11,229 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 663th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 290 in Australia in 2026, of 859.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Cook · 2016Cook · 2018Cook · 2023Cook · 2026

Burnt area
11,229ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
28days
3 Sept 2026 – 30 Sept 2026
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
3 Sept
2026
Heat detections
431
in a single hotspot: 48 MW
Danger at start
25
High · FWI index
Average daily power
88MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 3 Sept30 Sept
30 Sept 2026

How it evolved, day by day

4 Sept 2026 · 18 MW · 5 5 Sept 2026 · 1 MW · 2 6 Sept 2026 · 8 MW · 4 7 Sept 2026 · 85 MW · 20 8 Sept 2026 · 140 MW · 16 9 Sept 2026 · 41 MW · 22 10 Sept 2026 · 56 MW · 8 11 Sept 2026 · 162 MW · 12 12 Sept 2026 · 12 MW · 12 13 Sept 2026 · 168 MW · 39 15 Sept 2026 · 36 MW · 19 16 Sept 2026 · 45 MW · 25 17 Sept 2026 · 357 MW · 67 19 Sept 2026 · 81 MW · 8 20 Sept 2026 · 8 MW · 4 21 Sept 2026 · 81 MW · 26 22 Sept 2026 · 168 MW · 24 23 Sept 2026 · 45 MW · 13 25 Sept 2026 · 4 MW · 2 26 Sept 2026 · 231 MW · 45 27 Sept 2026 · 1 MW · 2 28 Sept 2026 · 135 MW · 32 29 Sept 2026 · 209 MW · 22 30 Sept 2026 · 20 MW · 2
4 Sept 8 Sept 12 Sept 17 Sept 22 Sept 27 Sept

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

The weather it burned in

29°high
82km/h · peak gust
33%lowest humidity

It had gone 56 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

91% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 6,270 ha in 2016, 1,595 ha in 2017, 4,799 ha in 2018, 379 ha in 2021, 108 ha in 2023, 145 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 10,268 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 7.1% of the area of London (112 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
    11,397 ha reached on 4 Sept
    0.1 %

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.

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)
3 Sept 26.4 °C 46 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
4 Sept 26.5 °C 48 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
5 Sept 26.8 °C 47 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
6 Sept 28.8 °C 38 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
7 Sept 27.7 °C 43 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
8 Sept 29.2 °C 47 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
9 Sept 27.6 °C 49 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
10 Sept 26.0 °C 52 % 61 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
11 Sept 26.5 °C 39 % 78 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
12 Sept 25.5 °C 52 % 60 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
13 Sept 26.1 °C 48 % 64 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
14 Sept 25.7 °C 51 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
15 Sept 26.0 °C 50 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
16 Sept 26.6 °C 33 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
17 Sept 25.9 °C 48 % 70 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
18 Sept 25.4 °C 40 % 82 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
19 Sept 25.5 °C 43 % 71 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
20 Sept 25.8 °C 45 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
21 Sept 26.4 °C 42 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
22 Sept 25.4 °C 50 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
23 Sept 26.2 °C 47 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
24 Sept 26.9 °C 47 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
25 Sept 26.0 °C 53 % 64 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
26 Sept 26.5 °C 53 % 61 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
27 Sept 27.5 °C 52 % 63 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
28 Sept 26.6 °C 54 % 65 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
29 Sept 25.9 °C 53 % 70 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
30 Sept 26.0 °C 50 % 67 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
1 Oct after 25.6 °C 55 % 62 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
2 Oct after 26.0 °C 43 % 61 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
3 Oct after 27.0 °C 42 % 59 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
4 Oct after 27.3 °C 35 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
5 Oct after 27.5 °C 48 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 29

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 27 Aug 2026
After · 7 Oct 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 23 September 2026 the air beside the fire reached 19 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak19 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1023 µg/m³
Optical depth0.24
123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930123
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 · 431Every 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 3 September 2026 and 30 September 2026: 28 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 11,229 hectares (112.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Cook (11,397 ha, 0.1 %).
Is the Cook fire still active?
No fire detections since 30 Sept 2026, 03:36 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 29.2 °C, humidity dropped to 33 % and gusts hit 82 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 41, 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 · 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. 431 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.