Cook fire, 13 September 2026 Cook
The fire started on 13 September 2026 in Cook, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 30 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 11,289 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 655th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 286 in Australia in 2026, of 859.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Cook · 2017Cook · 2026Cook · 2026Aurukun · 2019
- Burnt area
- 11,289ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 30days
- 13 Sept 2026 – 12 Oct 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- local government areas
- Started on
- 13 Sept
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 499
- in a single hotspot: 83 MW
- Danger at start
- 40
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 116MW
- 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 more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
64% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 851 ha in 2016, 2,893 ha in 2017, 756 ha in 2018, 44 ha in 2019, 3,223 ha in 2020, 932 ha in 2021, 1,413 ha in 2022, 913 ha in 2023, 3,919 ha in 2024, 689 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 7,195 ha that had burned before.
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 started11,319 ha reached on 13 Sept0.1 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 13 Sept | 31.7 °C | 39 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 14 Sept | 31.9 °C | 34 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 15 Sept | 32.2 °C | 34 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 16 Sept | 31.6 °C | 37 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 17 Sept | 33.1 °C | 23 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 18 Sept | 31.6 °C | 35 % | 60 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 19 Sept | 30.8 °C | 37 % | 56 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
| 20 Sept | 32.2 °C | 36 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 21 Sept | 32.0 °C | 36 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 22 Sept | 32.2 °C | 35 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 23 Sept | 32.0 °C | 36 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 24 Sept | 31.8 °C | 39 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 25 Sept | 32.0 °C | 38 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 26 Sept | 32.0 °C | 39 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 27 Sept | 32.8 °C | 35 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 28 Sept | 32.9 °C | 37 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 29 Sept | 31.2 °C | 45 % | 51 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 30 Sept | 31.2 °C | 44 % | 48 km/h | 0.1 mm | Very high 40 |
| 1 Oct | 33.1 °C | 33 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 2 Oct | 32.0 °C | 34 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 3 Oct | 31.3 °C | 41 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 4 Oct | 32.8 °C | 36 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 5 Oct | 33.8 °C | 30 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
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 18 September 2026 the air beside the fire reached 17 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO 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 · 499Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Cook fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 13 September 2026 to 12 October 2026 (30 days). The perimeter dates it from 13 September 2026 to 8 October 2026.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 11,289 hectares (112.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Cook (11,319 ha, 0.1 %).
- Is the Cook fire still active?
- No fire detections since 12 Oct 2026, 04:53 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 33.1 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 60 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 55, class Extreme.
- 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
How we know this
- Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 13 September 2026 to 8 October 2026. 499 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.