Arrouquelas fire, August 2022 Arrouquelas
The fire started on 20 August 2022 in Arrouquelas, Portugal, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 106 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.
Number 101 in Portugal in 2022, of 107.
Compare with…
We have the Copernicus perimeter for this fire, but the VIIRS sensors did not capture it in enough detail: no day-by-day evolution, but the split by municipality is there.
- Burnt area
- 106ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 1day
- 20 Aug 2022 – 20 Aug 2022
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- freguesias
- Started on
- 20 Aug
- 2022
- Danger at start
- 41
- Very high · FWI index
Where it burned
The weather it burned in
It had gone 47 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
-
106 ha3.8 %
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 areas39 %
- Artificial surfaces38 %
- Broadleaved forest23 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20 Aug | 30.2 °C | 39 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 21 Aug after | 25.9 °C | 47 % | 55 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 22 Aug after | 28.5 °C | 45 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 23 Aug after | 29.4 °C | 49 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 24 Aug after | 23.5 °C | 67 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 25 Aug after | 25.1 °C | 64 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 26 Aug after | 25.8 °C | 61 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 27 Aug after | 26.5 °C | 47 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 28 Aug after | 26.5 °C | 48 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 29 Aug after | 25.8 °C | 51 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 30 Aug after | 25.3 °C | 49 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
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 19 August 2022 the air beside the fire reached 15 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)
Other fires nearby
- 618 haCaldas da Rainha LandalAugust 2022 · 4 days · 5 km away
- 386 haCadaval União das Freguesias de Lamas e CercalJuly 2023 · 5 days · 12 km away
- 252 haSantarém AlcanedeJuly 2025 · 2 days · 19 km away
- 585 haPorto de Mós Arrimal e MendigaAugust 2020 · 2 days · 27 km away
- 1,032 haPorto de Mós Serro VentosoSeptember 2020 · 3 days · 30 km away
- 288 haMira de AireAugust 2017 · 6 days · 35 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Arrouquelas fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 20 August 2022 and 20 August 2022: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 106 hectares (1.1 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Arrouquelas (106 ha, 3.8 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire started in Arrouquelas and came within 1.9 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 30.2 °C, humidity dropped to 39 % and gusts hit 48 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 · 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. No 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 (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.