Burned area
satellite only806ha
Perimeter published by EFFIS (Copernicus).
- Source
- EFFIS (Copernicus)
- Date
- perimeter revised on 6 July 2026
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page to compare it with.
FR · France · –
Beaufort fire, July 2026 Pouzols-Minervois, Oupia, Mailhac
Out · last detection 2 Jul 2026, 13:46 UTC
The fire started on 1 July 2026 in Beaufort, France, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 806 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 6 municipalities.
It is the 2th largest in Hérault since 2016 (of 14 with a page). Number 12 in France in 2026, of 115.
Use this data
Compare with…
Use this data
Fire page data · version 2026-10-25matches the official recordwith caveatssatellite onlymodel
When copying, the sentence is
Tick the figures you want: they make up the lede and the CSV.
Duration by satellite
satellite only2days
1 Jul 2026 to 2 Jul 2026: first and last day with fire on the page.
- Source
- EFFIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- last detection: 2 Jul 2026, 13:46 UTC
+− cross-check
Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.
Start
satellite only1 Jul 2026
First day with fire seen by the satellites or the perimeter.
- Source
- EFFIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- 1 Jul 2026
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page, so the alert time and the cause are not known here.
Hotspots
satellite only34
VIIRS detections at 375 m. Most intense hotspot: 105 MW.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (Suomi NPP)
- Date
- 1 Jul 2026 – 2 Jul 2026
+− cross-check
There is no official record to compare with. Each hotspot is a pixel detected in one satellite pass, not a separate fire.
The worst day
satellite only521MW
Total radiative power on 2 July 2026; hotspots that day: 30.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (FRP)
- Date
- 2 Jul 2026
+− cross-check
Fire radiative power (FRP) measures the energy the fire gives off when the satellite passes. Added up by day, it compares intensity, not area.
Danger at the start
model69.0FWI · extreme
Fire Weather Index (Canadian system) computed by WorldFires for the day the fire started. Consecutive days without rain before: 22.
- Source
- WorldFires calculation (Canadian FWI system)
- Date
- 1 Jul 2026, local noon
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
This is an index computed from weather model data, not a measurement of the fire nor an official warning. Danger warnings are issued by each country’s authority. Emergency number and official warnings
Weather during the fire
model30.1°C · 27% RH
High of 30.1 °C and minimum humidity of 27% on 2 July 2026; gusts of 75 km/h on 2 July 2026.
- Source
- weather model at the fire’s grid cell
- Date
- 1 Jul 2026 – 2 Jul 2026
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
These are model values for a cell of about 25 km, not from a weather station: they may differ from what was measured on the ground.
Living inside
model≈ 50people
Estimated residents inside the perimeter and 2.0 ha of built-up area (100 m grid, epoch 2025).
- Source
- GHSL R2023A · JRC
- Date
- calculated on 24 October 2026
+− cross-check
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.
This page’s change log has been kept since 24 October 2026: every night what it publishes is compared and the difference is logged. Anything earlier is reconstructed from each source’s date and marked as reconstructed.
Show
-
· reconstructed weatherWeather and FWI computed from the ERA5 reanalysis
-
logLast day with fire: 1 July 2026 → 2 July 2026.
-
· reconstructed GHSLPopulation and built-up area computed
-
· reconstructed perimeterEFFIS (Copernicus) revises the perimeter
What was saved on 25 October 2026
Every night a snapshot of what the page shows is saved. If anything changes, it appears in the list as a log entry.
- Area
- 806 ha
- Dates
- 1 Jul 2026 – 2 Jul 2026
- Name
- Beaufort
- Official record
- —
Versioned permanent link
https://worldfires.org/en/fire/beaufort-herault-2026-07?v=2026-10-25A version keeps the area, dates, name and official record; the area as it was logged (changes under 2% are not logged). The map, hotspots and weather always show today’s data.
Citation
A lede of about 60 words figures only, no adjectives
CSV for this fire beaufort-herault-2026-07.csv · daily, no individual hotspots
| fecha | focos_viirs | frp_mw | tmax_c | tmin_c | hr_min_pct | viento_max_kmh | racha_max_kmh | precip_mm | fwi | clase_fwi | dentro_del_incendio |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-07-01 | 4 | 303 | 28.3 | 20.5 | 35 | 33.2 | 73.1 | 0 | 69 | extremo | 1 |
| 2026-07-02 | 30 | 521 | 30.1 | 19.5 | 27 | 34.2 | 74.9 | 0 | 70.5 | muy_extremo | 1 |
| 2026-07-03 | 0 | 0 | 31.4 | 21.3 | 34 | 28 | 62.6 | 0 | 60.6 | extremo | 0 |
| 2026-07-04 | 0 | 0 | 34.6 | 21.1 | 18 | 21.5 | 51.8 | 0 | 64.4 | extremo | 0 |
| 2026-07-05 | 0 | 0 | 36.9 | 20.5 | 14 | 17.5 | 44.6 | 0 | 69.3 | extremo | 0 |
| 2026-07-06 | 0 | 0 | 39.2 | 21.2 | 10 | 11.2 | 33.1 | 0 | 55 | extremo | 0 |
| 2026-07-07 | 0 | 0 | 38.9 | 19.9 | 11 | 9.1 | 25.9 | 0 | 56.9 | extremo | 0 |
| 2026-07-08 | 0 | 0 | 39 | 22.7 | 15 | 19.5 | 43.6 | 0 | 69.7 | extremo | 0 |
| 2026-07-09 | 0 | 0 | 38.9 | 23.2 | 18 | 15.2 | 37.8 | 0 | 65.6 | extremo | 0 |
| 2026-07-10 | 0 | 0 | 33.2 | 19.9 | 32 | 15.9 | 40 | 0 | 56.9 | extremo | 0 |
| 2026-07-11 | 0 | 0 | 32.9 | 21.4 | 41 | 16.2 | 41.8 | 0 | 45.2 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2026-07-12 | 0 | 0 | 31.7 | 21 | 36 | 20.6 | 48.6 | 0 | 49.1 | muy_alto | 0 |
It is generated in your browser from this page’s data: one file per fire, aggregated by day and without individual hotspots.
Live widget for your story
It updates itself while the fire is still active and links to this page. Free, with the attribution shown at the bottom.
Sources for this page: EFFIS (Copernicus), NASA FIRMS (VIIRS), ERA5 (ECMWF/Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0), GHSL (JRC). Open-Meteo.com · How we build fire pages: methodology
- Burnt area
- 806ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- ≈ 2days
- 1 Jul 2026 – 2 Jul 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 6
- communes
- Started on
- 1 Jul
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 34
- in a single hotspot: 105 MW
- Danger at start
- 69
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 412MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
HOTSPOTS BY DAY
1 Jul2 Jul
2 Jul 2026
How it evolved, day by day
1 Jul
2 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
30°high
75km/h · peak gust
27%lowest humidity
It had gone 22 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).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
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
-
Pouzols-Minervois 599 inhabitants · fire reached the centre401 ha reached on 2 Jul39 %
-
Oupia 274 inhabitants · 1.3 km from the centre184 ha reached on 1 Jul20 %
-
Mailhac 595 inhabitants · fire reached the centre160 ha15 %
-
36 ha reached on 1 Jul5.9 %
-
Aigne 301 inhabitants · 2.5 km from the centre25 ha2.2 %
-
Paraza 700 inhabitants · 2.5 km from the centre1 ha0.1 %
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
- Coniferous forest42 %
- Agricultural areas38 %
- Scrub and transitional woodland9.8 %
- Sclerophyllous scrub7.7 %
- Other natural land3.0 %
Land cover inside the perimeter according to Corine Land Cover, as reported by Copernicus.
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2025Built-up area2.0 ha
Residents≈ 50
Inside the perimeter there were about 2.0 hectares of built-up land and about 50 residents (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.
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
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)
Started with Extreme FWI: 30 % of the area in France Strong wind: 47 % of the area in France
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 Jul | 28.3 °C | 35 % | 73 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 69 |
| 2 Jul | 30.1 °C | 27 % | 75 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 70 |
| 3 Jul after | 31.4 °C | 34 % | 63 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 61 |
| 4 Jul after | 34.6 °C | 18 % | 52 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 64 |
| 5 Jul after | 36.9 °C | 14 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 69 |
| 6 Jul after | 39.2 °C | 10 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 7 Jul after | 38.9 °C | 11 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 8 Jul after | 39.0 °C | 15 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 70 |
| 9 Jul after | 38.9 °C | 18 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 66 |
| 10 Jul after | 33.2 °C | 32 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 11 Jul after | 32.9 °C | 41 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 12 Jul after | 31.7 °C | 36 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
Its twins: fires that started in the same weather
It started with an FWI of 69.0, a minimum humidity of 35% and 22 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 3.
FWI at the start
69.0
Minimum humidity
35 %
Days without rain
22
this fire
chosen twins
rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar
Outlines of the closest twins
This fire · Beaufort fire, July 2026
806 ha
2 days
FWI 69.0
Min. humidity 35 %
Ribaute fire, August 2025
11,391 ha
3 days
FWI 66.5
Min. humidity 25 %
28 km away, in 2025
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Thézan-des-Corbières fire, July 2019
302 ha
1 day
FWI 65.3
Min. humidity 25 %
20 km away, in 2019
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Montredon-des-Corbières fire, July 2016
745 ha
2 days
FWI 55.9
Min. humidity 33 %
17 km away, in 2016
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 20.7 mm on 22 Jul.
What happened to them
Fires in the area that started in similar weather: 3. With fewer than 15 we give no figures: they would be more noise than signal.
This is a bank of analogues: it shows what usually happens, not what will happen. With fewer than 15 twins we give no figures. How we calculate it
How it ended
—first rain
—no rain in ten days
75km/h · max. gust
It was considered over on 2 Jul, and not even 1 mm fell in the following ten days: it went out without rain.
Weather on this page: Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)
How a twin is chosen
- Same area: fires that have already ended, less than 250 km from this one, since 2016.
- Same start: we compare the FWI on the first day, the minimum humidity that day and the run of days without rain before it. The slider sets how much they may differ.
- Only pages with final weather data (ERA5 reanalysis) calculated in the same way as this fire’s; agricultural and grass burns and pages with data under review are left out.
- Fires burning at the same time as this one (a week before or after) are left out: they share the same spell of weather and do not count as a precedent.
- They are sorted by similarity, and the outlines of the first five are drawn.
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
↔
Before · 24 Jun 2026
After · 9 Jul 2026
Sentinel-2 did not pass over on that day. Try another date, or use false colour, which is daily.
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 4 July 2026 the air beside the fire reached 7 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).
PM2.5 peak7 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1010 µg/m³
Optical depth0.33
29 Jun1 Jul3 Jul
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 · 34Every 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 time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Beaufort fire last?
- The official perimeter only gives the start date (1 July 2026). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 2 July 2026 (2 days from 1 July 2026), the last day with detections before more than 10 days in a row without any, so it is approximate.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 806 hectares (8.1 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 6 municipalities: Pouzols-Minervois (401 ha, 39 %); Oupia (184 ha, 20 %); Mailhac (160 ha, 15 %); Beaufort (36 ha, 5.9 %); Aigne (25 ha, 2.2 %); Paraza (1 ha, 0.1 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire reached the centre of Pouzols-Minervois: 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 30.1 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % and gusts hit 75 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 70, class Very extreme.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of France (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 · 18 · Emergency number and official warnings
Satellite cross-check
History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 1 July 2026 → 2 July 2026.
RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version
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.
- The official perimeter has no end date: the end is the last day with VIIRS detections inside the perimeter before a gap of more than 10 days (150 days at most), so it is approximate. 34 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.
- Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
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 ADM5 (Open Data Commons Attribution License 1.0). 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.