Benahadux fire, May 2025 Benahadux, Gádor, Huércal de Almería
The fire started on 3 May 2025 in Benahadux, Spain, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 1,336 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 4 municipalities.
It is the 2th largest in Almeria since 2016 (of 16 with a page). Number 39 in Spain in 2025, of 158.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 1,336ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 2days
- 3 May 2025 – 4 May 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 4
- municipalities
- Started on
- 3 May
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 31
- in a single hotspot: 32 MW
- Danger at start
- 23
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 265MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
4 May 2025 · 265 MW · 31
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 17 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.6 mm on 8 May.
This area had burned before
0% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4 ha in 2019.
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
-
572 ha reached on 4 May35 %
-
Gádor 3,130 inhabitants · 2.8 km from the centre374 ha reached on 4 May4.3 %
-
Huércal de Almería 18,660 inhabitants · 2.9 km from the centre374 ha reached on 4 May18 %
-
18 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
- Sclerophyllous scrub82 %
- Other natural land17 %
- Artificial surfaces0.8 %
Natura 2000 protected area affected: 78 %
- LIC Sierras de Gádor y Enix ES6110008
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.
Checked against the press
Checked on 30 September 2026We checked this page against 4 sources published once the fire was out. This is what they add:
- Also known as
- Incendio de Sierra de Gádor · Incendio de Huércal de Almería · Incendios en Benahadux (2025)
Sources
- El Infoca da por extinguido el incendio forestal en Huércal de Almería — Almería Noticias, 7 May 2025
- Extinguido el incendio forestal de Huércal de Almería declarado el pasado sábado — Infobae (Europa Press), 6 May 2025
- Controlado el incendio forestal de la sierra de Gádor — Canal Sur, 5 May 2025
- El incendio de Huércal de Almería, provocado por un rayo, arrasa 1.000 hectáreas — Canal Sur, 4 May 2025
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 May | 25.1 °C | 27 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 4 May | 22.9 °C | 34 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 5 May after | 21.3 °C | 33 % | 36 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 22 |
| 6 May after | 21.0 °C | 37 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 7 May after | 20.6 °C | 44 % | 37 km/h | 0.9 mm | Moderate 13 |
| 8 May after | 20.2 °C | 46 % | 41 km/h | 2.6 mm | Very low 4 |
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 6 May 2025 the air beside the fire reached 50 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 24: 1.6 times the WHO daily 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 · 31Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Benahadux fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 3 May 2025 and 4 May 2025: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,336 hectares (13.4 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 4 municipalities: Benahadux (572 ha, 35 %); Gádor (374 ha, 4.3 %); Huércal de Almería (374 ha, 18 %); Almería (18 ha, 0.1 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire started in Benahadux and came within 1.8 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 25.1 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 23, class 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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 31 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- Checked against news and agencies: 4 confirmed sources.
- 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.