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Baião fire, August 2023 Teixeira e Teixeiró, Sedielos, Vila Marim

Out · last detection 22 Aug 2023, 13:30 UTC

The fire started on 22 August 2023 in Teixeira e Teixeiró, Portugal, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 351 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 3 municipalities. According to ICNF, the largest of the 2 recorded fires was detected on 21 August 2023 at 22:24 and declared extinguished on 22 August 2023.

It is the 5th largest in Baião since 2016 (of 14 with a page). Number 12 in Portugal in 2023, of 38.

Burnt area
351ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
1day
22 Aug 2023 – 22 Aug 2023
Municipalities hit
3
freguesias
Started on
22 Aug
2023
Heat detections
20
in a single hotspot: 53 MW
Danger at start
32
High · FWI index
Energy released
330MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 22 Aug22 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

22

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

The weather it burned in

36°high
27km/h · peak gust
23%lowest humidity

It had gone 19 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.3 mm on 23 Aug.

This area had burned before

82% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 276 ha in 2016, 1 ha in 2019, 62 ha in 2020, 5 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 289 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Teixeira e Teixeiró 723 inhabitants · 0.7 km from the town where it started
    351 ha reached on 22 Aug
    13 %
  2. Sedielos 750 inhabitants · 3.5 km from the town
    0 ha
    0.0 %
  3. Vila Marim 915 inhabitants · 1.8 km from the town
    0 ha
    0.0 %

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

  • Other natural land89 %
  • Scrub and transitional woodland5.6 %
  • Mixed forest3.9 %
  • Agricultural areas1.1 %

Natura 2000 protected area affected: 67 %

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, 2 fires started inside this perimeter on these dates, totalling 395 ha (the satellite measured 351 ha).

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)
22 Aug 35.8 °C 23 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
23 Aug after 32.7 °C 34 % 30 km/h 1.3 mm High 23

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 15 Aug 2023
After · 29 Aug 2023

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 24 August 2023 the air beside the fire reached 16 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak16 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1036 µg/m³
Optical depth0.27
202122232425
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 · 20Every 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 22 August 2023 and 22 August 2023: 1 day between the first and last image with fire. According to ICNF, the largest of the 2 recorded fires was detected on 21 August 2023 at 22:24 and declared extinguished on 22 August 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 351 hectares (3.5 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: Teixeira e Teixeiró (351 ha, 13 %); Sedielos (0 ha, 0.0 %); Vila Marim (0 ha, 0.0 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The closest fire to a town centre came within 0.7 km of Teixeira e Teixeiró. 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 35.8 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 27 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 32, 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

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.

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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.