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Almeida fire, July 2017 Miuzela e Porto de Ovelha, Aldeia da Ribeira, Vilar Maior e Badamalos

Out · last detection 27 Jul 2017, 12:57 UTC

The fire started on 27 July 2017 in Miuzela e Porto de Ovelha, Portugal, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 658 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.

Number 80 in Portugal in 2017, of 210.

Burnt area
658ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
2days
27 Jul 2017 – 28 Jul 2017
Municipalities hit
2
freguesias
Started on
27 Jul
2017
Heat detections
2
in a single hotspot: 57 MW
Danger at start
40
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
114MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 27 Jul28 Jul

How it evolved, day by day

27

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

The weather it burned in

32°high
38km/h · peak gust
19%lowest humidity

It had gone 19 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.

What happened to each town

  1. Miuzela e Porto de Ovelha 280 inhabitants · 0.0 km from the town where it started
    631 ha reached on 27 Jul
    22 %
  2. Aldeia da Ribeira, Vilar Maior e Badamalos 266 inhabitants · 5.8 km from the town
    27 ha
    0.4 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the official 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.

What burned

  • Scrub and transitional woodland42 %
  • Other natural land42 %
  • Agricultural areas16 %

Natura 2000 protected area affected: 3 %

Natura 2000 sites (European Environment Agency, 2024 release) crossed by the perimeter.

Land cover inside the perimeter according to Corine Land Cover, as reported by Copernicus.

Official record

According to ICNF, this fire started on 27 July 2017 and burned 488 ha (the satellite measured 658 ha). The two figures differ a lot, so these may not be exactly the same fire: take them as nearby records.

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)
27 Jul 32.1 °C 19 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
28 Jul 31.3 °C 21 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
29 Jul after 31.6 °C 26 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
30 Jul after 29.3 °C 25 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
31 Jul after 22.5 °C 34 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
1 Aug after 25.9 °C 27 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
2 Aug after 30.3 °C 17 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
3 Aug after 30.7 °C 39 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
4 Aug after 33.8 °C 28 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
5 Aug after 31.8 °C 27 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
6 Aug after 30.6 °C 26 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
7 Aug after 27.9 °C 20 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 20 Jul 2017
After · 4 Aug 2017

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 28 July 2017 the air beside the fire reached 9 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak9 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1020 µg/m³
25262728293031
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 · 2Every 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 Portugal ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Almeida fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 27 July 2017 and 28 July 2017: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 658 hectares (6.6 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Miuzela e Porto de Ovelha (631 ha, 22 %); Aldeia da Ribeira, Vilar Maior e Badamalos (27 ha, 0.4 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The closest fire to a town centre came within 0.0 km of Miuzela e Porto de Ovelha. That is the distance to the perimeter or nearest hotspot; it does not mean it entered the houses.
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 32.1 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 41, class Very 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

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
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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 112.

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.