Alijó fire, September 2018 Vila Verde
The fire started on 23 September 2018 in Vila Verde, Portugal, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 542 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality. According to ICNF, it was detected on 23 September 2018 at 21:04 and declared extinguished on 24 September 2018.
It is the 5th largest in Alijó since 2016 (of 11 with a page). Number 5 in Portugal in 2018, of 23.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 542ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 2days
- 23 Sept 2018 – 24 Sept 2018
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- freguesias
- Started on
- 23 Sept
- 2018
- Heat detections
- 34
- in a single hotspot: 138 MW
- Danger at start
- 26
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 624MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
24 Sept 2018 · 624 MW · 34
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 14 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Lisbon boundary: geoBoundaries · geoBoundaries, DG Territory (CC0 1.0).
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).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
543 ha reached on 24 Sept13 %
Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the official 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.
What burned
- Other natural land72 %
- Agricultural areas14 %
- Scrub and transitional woodland14 %
Land cover inside the perimeter according to Corine Land Cover, as reported by Copernicus.
Official record
According to ICNF, this fire started on 23 September 2018 and burned 475 ha (the satellite measured 542 ha).
- Alijó Vila Verde 23 September 2018 · 21:04 475 ha · extinguished on 24 September 2018 · cause: negligence
ICNF (Instituto da Conservação da Natureza e das Florestas). This is the agency’s operational record: its figures may be revised when the year’s statistics are closed.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 23 Sept | 29.5 °C | 29 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 24 Sept | 27.4 °C | 38 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 25 Sept after | 25.0 °C | 25 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 26 Sept after | 26.9 °C | 33 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 27 Sept after | 26.4 °C | 44 % | 21 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 23 |
| 28 Sept after | 26.3 °C | 34 % | 17 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 29 Sept after | 26.2 °C | 32 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 30 Sept after | 26.4 °C | 26 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 1 Oct after | 22.6 °C | 27 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 2 Oct after | 23.3 °C | 17 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 3 Oct after | 25.2 °C | 23 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 4 Oct after | 25.8 °C | 24 % | 18 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
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 27 September 2018 the air beside the fire reached 13 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 · 34Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 6,118 haVila Pouca de Aguiar Telões17 September 2024 · 3 days · 12 km away
- 7,641 haMurça TresminasJuly 2022 · 5 days · 13 km away
- 5,850 haVila Real Adoufe e Vilarinho de Samardã21 August 2022 · 6 days · 13 km away
- 5,597 haAlijó Vila ChãJuly 2017 · 3 days · 13 km away
- 6,087 haVila Real Vila Marim3 August 2025 · 13 days · 20 km away
- 5,163 haMirandela FrechasAugust 2025 · 3 days · 38 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Alijó fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 23 September 2018 and 24 September 2018: 2 days between the first and last image with fire. According to ICNF, it was detected on 23 September 2018 at 21:04 and declared extinguished on 24 September 2018.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 542 hectares (5.4 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Vila Verde (543 ha, 13 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire started in Vila Verde and reached its centre: the point marking it was inside the burnt area or less than 500 metres from it. That does not mean houses burned.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 29.5 °C, humidity dropped to 29 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 28, class High.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Portugal (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: 112 · Emergency number and official warnings ›
- ICNF · Instituto da Conservação da Natureza e das Florestas ↗
- ANEPC · Proteção Civil ↗
- Fogos.pt (ocorrências em tempo real) ↗
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: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 34 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- Compared with ICNF: 475 official ha against 542 ha of perimeter; they agree within 25%.
- Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.
Where this data comes from
The perimeter and land cover come from the Copernicus European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS), measured on MODIS and Sentinel-2 imagery and published under CC BY 4.0. 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 ADM3 (CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication). The area per municipality is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ slightly from each country’s official figure.