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Hope Vale fire, September 2018 Cook, Hope Vale

Out · last detection 27 Sept 2018, 04:07 UTC

The fire started on 1 September 2018 in Hope Vale, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 27 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 11,743 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 631th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 309 in Australia in 2018, of 923.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Cook · 2016Cook · 2017Cook · 2020Cook · 2023

Burnt area
11,743ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
27days
1 Sept 2018 – 27 Sept 2018
Municipalities hit
2
local government areas
Started on
1 Sept
2018
Heat detections
500
in a single hotspot: 57 MW
Danger at start
26
High · FWI index
Average daily power
137MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 1 Sept27 Sept
27 Sept 2018

How it evolved, day by day

1 Sept 2018 · 66 MW · 10 2 Sept 2018 · 39 MW · 1 3 Sept 2018 · 177 MW · 7 5 Sept 2018 · 2 MW · 2 6 Sept 2018 · 16 MW · 5 7 Sept 2018 · 83 MW · 8 8 Sept 2018 · 37 MW · 7 9 Sept 2018 · 20 MW · 4 10 Sept 2018 · 92 MW · 21 11 Sept 2018 · 26 MW · 8 12 Sept 2018 · 120 MW · 26 13 Sept 2018 · 179 MW · 26 14 Sept 2018 · 148 MW · 37 15 Sept 2018 · 5 MW · 7 16 Sept 2018 · 104 MW · 19 17 Sept 2018 · 860 MW · 71 18 Sept 2018 · 319 MW · 60 19 Sept 2018 · 308 MW · 40 20 Sept 2018 · 562 MW · 72 21 Sept 2018 · 172 MW · 36 22 Sept 2018 · 50 MW · 16 23 Sept 2018 · 10 MW · 1 25 Sept 2018 · 19 MW · 11 26 Sept 2018 · 9 MW · 4 27 Sept 2018 · 4 MW · 1
1 Sept 6 Sept 10 Sept 14 Sept 17 Sept 18 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

31°high
74km/h · peak gust
28%lowest humidity

It had gone 44 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.0 mm on 13 Oct.

This area had burned before

59% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 6,671 ha in 2016, 731 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,875 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 7.4% of the area of London (117 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
    10,501 ha reached on 5 Sept
    0.1 %
  2. Hope Vale where it started
    1,380 ha reached on 1 Sept
    1.2 %

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)
1 Sept 29.9 °C 39 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
2 Sept 29.3 °C 46 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
3 Sept 30.0 °C 32 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
4 Sept 28.8 °C 42 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
5 Sept 28.0 °C 44 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
6 Sept 28.4 °C 45 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
7 Sept 29.1 °C 37 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
8 Sept 28.7 °C 46 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
9 Sept 28.5 °C 48 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
10 Sept 27.6 °C 53 % 64 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
11 Sept 26.5 °C 56 % 62 km/h 0.8 mm High 22
12 Sept 28.5 °C 43 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
13 Sept 28.0 °C 50 % 59 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
14 Sept 27.6 °C 44 % 61 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
15 Sept 28.2 °C 51 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
16 Sept 30.7 °C 28 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
17 Sept 29.5 °C 39 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
18 Sept 27.9 °C 46 % 60 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
19 Sept 28.4 °C 43 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
20 Sept 28.2 °C 40 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
21 Sept 27.4 °C 54 % 66 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
22 Sept 28.3 °C 47 % 71 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
23 Sept 27.7 °C 44 % 68 km/h 0.1 mm High 36
24 Sept 27.0 °C 45 % 63 km/h 0.1 mm High 34
25 Sept 29.0 °C 36 % 59 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
26 Sept 28.2 °C 40 % 59 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
27 Sept 27.1 °C 46 % 58 km/h 1.1 mm High 23
28 Sept after 27.8 °C 38 % 60 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
29 Sept after 27.7 °C 40 % 65 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
30 Sept after 28.1 °C 44 % 60 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
1 Oct after 28.0 °C 46 % 69 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
2 Oct after 28.3 °C 42 % 74 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
3 Oct after 27.7 °C 45 % 64 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
4 Oct after 28.3 °C 37 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
5 Oct after 31.7 °C 34 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
6 Oct after 30.6 °C 42 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
7 Oct after 30.1 °C 43 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
8 Oct after 30.2 °C 42 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
9 Oct after 30.1 °C 44 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
10 Oct after 30.5 °C 38 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
11 Oct after 30.7 °C 39 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
12 Oct after 31.9 °C 41 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
13 Oct after 30.7 °C 62 % 37 km/h 2.0 mm Low 11

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 25 Aug 2018
After · 4 Oct 2018

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

Detections table · 500Every 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 Hope Vale fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 1 September 2018 and 27 September 2018: 27 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 11,743 hectares (117.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Cook (10,501 ha, 0.1 %); Hope Vale (1,380 ha, 1.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 30.7 °C, humidity dropped to 28 % and gusts hit 74 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, 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.

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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. 500 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.

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.