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Baião fire, 15 July 2022 Ancede e Ribadouro, Gove

Out · last detection 17 Jul 2022, 13:48 UTC

The fire started on 15 July 2022 in Ancede e Ribadouro, Portugal, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 325 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities. According to ICNF, the largest of the 2 recorded fires was detected on 14 July 2022 at 15:29 and declared extinguished on 16 July 2022.

It is the 8th largest in Baião since 2016 (of 16 with a page). Number 40 in Portugal in 2022, of 107.

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Burnt area
325ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
3days
15 Jul 2022 – 17 Jul 2022
Municipalities hit
2
freguesias
Started on
15 Jul
2022
Heat detections
12
in a single hotspot: 201 MW
Danger at start
25
High · FWI index
Average daily power
252MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 Jul17 Jul
17 Jul 2022

How it evolved, day by day

15 Jul 2022 · 498 MW · 11 17 Jul 2022 · 6 MW · 1
15 Jul 17 Jul

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

The weather it burned in

34°high
39km/h · peak gust
30%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

9% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 30 ha in 2019.

What happened to each town

  1. Ancede e Ribadouro 2,335 inhabitants · fire reached the centre where it started
    281 ha reached on 15 Jul
    19 %
  2. Gove 1,742 inhabitants · 0.7 km from the centre
    45 ha reached on 15 Jul
    4.0 %

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

  • Scrub and transitional woodland65 %
  • Other natural land12 %
  • Mixed forest10 %
  • Agricultural areas9.4 %
  • Broadleaved forest3.3 %

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

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2020
Built-up area2.8 ha
Residents≈ 150

Inside the perimeter there were about 2.8 hectares of built-up land and about 150 residents (GHSL 2020, satellite-based estimate).

This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned.

Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu

Official record

Complex of 2 fires according to ICNF

According to ICNF, 2 fires started inside this perimeter on these dates, totalling 349 ha (the satellite measured 325 ha).

ICNF records each fire that started at a different time or place separately; the satellite sees a single burned area, so this page groups them together. The numbers on the map show where each one started.

When each one burned

1 344 ha 2 5 ha
14 Jul18 Jul
arson negligence
  1. 1 Baião Ancede 14 July 2022 · 15:29 344 ha · extinguished on 16 July 2022 · cause: arson
  2. 2 Baião Ancede 17 July 2022 · 13:25 5 ha · extinguished on 17 July 2022 · cause: negligence

Total according to ICNF: 349 ha, 107 % of the 325 ha in the satellite perimeter.

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)
15 Jul 34.4 °C 35 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
16 Jul 33.4 °C 34 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
17 Jul 34.5 °C 30 % 39 km/h 0.1 mm High 28
18 Jul after 28.1 °C 44 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
19 Jul after 24.8 °C 53 % 39 km/h 0.5 mm Moderate 19
20 Jul after 31.1 °C 35 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
21 Jul after 30.4 °C 42 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
22 Jul after 29.7 °C 42 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
23 Jul after 31.8 °C 38 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
24 Jul after 28.4 °C 42 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
25 Jul after 29.4 °C 41 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
26 Jul after 27.8 °C 45 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
27 Jul after 27.7 °C 41 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 27

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 8 Jul 2022
After · 24 Jul 2022

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 15 July 2022 the air beside the fire reached 38 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 24: 1.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak38 µg/m³
Days over the guideline5 days
PM1052 µg/m³
1314151617181920
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 · 12Every 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 Baião fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 15 July 2022 and 17 July 2022: 3 days between the first and last image with fire. According to ICNF, the largest of the 2 recorded fires was detected on 14 July 2022 at 15:29 and declared extinguished on 16 July 2022.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 325 hectares (3.2 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Ancede e Ribadouro (281 ha, 19 %); Gove (45 ha, 4.0 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Ancede e Ribadouro 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 34.5 °C, humidity dropped to 30 % and gusts hit 39 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 ›

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 112.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 12 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • Compared with ICNF: 349 official ha against 325 ha of perimeter; they agree within 25%.
  • Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.
  • Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2020, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

How we build fire pages: methodology ›

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.