Aroche fire, August 2025 Aroche
The fire started on 13 August 2025 in Aroche, Spain, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 544 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 16th largest in Huelva since 2016 (of 36 with a page). Number 58 in Spain in 2025, of 158.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 544ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 5days
- 13 Aug 2025 – 17 Aug 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- municipalities
- Started on
- 13 Aug
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 21
- in a single hotspot: 111 MW
- Danger at start
- 48
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 1.1GW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
13 Aug 2025 · 1,078 MW · 21
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 2 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).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
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
-
545 ha reached on 13 Aug1.1 %
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
- Agricultural areas44 %
- Coniferous forest32 %
- Scrub and transitional woodland15 %
- Sclerophyllous scrub9.5 %
Natura 2000 protected area affected: 100 %
- ZEPA + LIC Sierra de Aracena y Picos de Aroche ES0000051
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.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 15 Aug | 36.8 °C | 21 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 16 Aug | 39.9 °C | 16 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 17 Aug | 39.9 °C | 16 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 18 Aug after | 32.4 °C | 19 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 19 Aug after | 29.6 °C | 25 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 20 Aug after | 28.8 °C | 29 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 21 Aug after | 30.0 °C | 26 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 22 Aug after | 32.0 °C | 25 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 23 Aug after | 30.7 °C | 28 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 24 Aug after | 29.9 °C | 29 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 25 Aug after | 32.1 °C | 29 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 26 Aug after | 32.6 °C | 30 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 27 Aug after | 28.3 °C | 27 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
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 16 August 2025 the air beside the fire reached 23 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 · 21Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 661 haMoura Santo Aleixo da RestauraçãoJune 2026 · 2 days · 20 km away
- 394 haCabezas RubiasJune 2020 · 1 day · 32 km away
- 550 haJerez de los CaballerosJuly 2026 · 2 days · 37 km away
- 334 haSanta Bárbara de CasaSeptember 2026 · 1 day · 37 km away
- 16,758 haAlmonaster la RealAugust 2020 · 6 days · 40 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Aroche fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 13 August 2025 to 17 August 2025 (5 days). The perimeter dates it from 15 August 2025 to 17 August 2025.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 544 hectares (5.4 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Aroche (545 ha, 1.1 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire started in Aroche and came within 8.0 km of its centre. That is the distance from the perimeter, or the nearest hotspot, to the point marking the centre; it does not mean it entered the houses.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 39.9 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 35 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 48, class Very high.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Spain (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 ›
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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 15 August 2025 to 17 August 2025. 21 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 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 (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 slightly from each country’s official figure.