How long did the Boticas fire last?

The official perimeter only gives the start date (16 August 2026). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 19 August 2026 (4 days from 16 August 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 430 hectares (4.3 km²). Official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Ardãos e Bobadela (407 ha, 11 %); Cervos (24 ha, 0.7 %).

Did the fire reach a town?

The fire started in Ardãos e Bobadela 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 37.8 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 52, class Extreme.

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.

PT · Portugal · 2026-08-16 → 2026-08-19

Boticas fire, August 2026 Ardãos e Bobadela, Cervos

Out · last detection 19 Aug 2026, 02:24 UTC

The fire started on 16 August 2026 in Ardãos e Bobadela, Portugal, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 430 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.

Number 24 in Portugal in 2026, of 78.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Vilarelho Da Raia · 2025 Chaves · 2022 Monterrei · 2025 Ribeira de Pena · 2016

Burnt area: 430ha; Copernicus perimeter
Duration: ≈ 4days; 16 Aug 2026 – 19 Aug 2026
Municipalities hit: 2; freguesias
Started on: 16 Aug; 2026
Heat detections: 28; in a single hotspot: 136 MW
Danger at start: 39; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 454MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 16 Aug19 Aug

Play back 19 Aug 2026

How it evolved, day by day

16 Aug 18 Aug 19 Aug

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

The weather it burned in

38°high

45km/h · peak gust

16%lowest humidity

It had gone 32 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.9 mm on 23 Aug.

This area had burned before

2% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 10 ha in 2025.

What happened to each town

Ardãos e Bobadela 463 inhabitants · fire reached the centre where it started

407 ha reached on 16 Aug

11 %
Cervos 227 inhabitants · 3.3 km from the centre

24 ha reached on 16 Aug

0.7 %

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 woodland50 %
Other natural land34 %
Agricultural areas16 %

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

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2025

Built-up area0.38 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.38 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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

Official record

According to ICNF, this fire started on 15 August 2026 and burned 158 ha (the satellite measured 430 ha). The two figures differ a lot, so these may not be exactly the same fire: take them as nearby records.

Boticas Bobadela 15 August 2026 · 23:57 158 ha · extinguished on 17 August 2026 · cause: natural (lightning)

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)
16 Aug	32.8 °C	18 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
17 Aug	36.4 °C	16 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
18 Aug	37.8 °C	16 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
19 Aug	30.2 °C	37 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
20 Aug after	24.4 °C	49 %	31 km/h	0.1 mm	High 25
21 Aug after	25.5 °C	27 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
22 Aug after	28.3 °C	29 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
23 Aug after	27.3 °C	27 %	37 km/h	1.9 mm	Moderate 18

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 9 Aug 2026

After · 26 Aug 2026

Before After

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 18 August 2026 the air beside the fire reached 100 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 47: 3.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak100 µg/m³

Days over the guideline2 days

PM10150 µg/m³

Optical depth1.26

WHO 15

141516171819202122

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 · 28Every 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

All fires in Portugal ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Boticas fire last?: The official perimeter only gives the start date (16 August 2026). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 19 August 2026 (4 days from 16 August 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 430 hectares (4.3 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Ardãos e Bobadela (407 ha, 11 %); Cervos (24 ha, 0.7 %).
Did the fire reach a town?: The fire started in Ardãos e Bobadela 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 37.8 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 52, class Extreme.
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

NASA FIRMS ↗
EFFIS · Copernicus ↗

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

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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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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. 28 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
Compared with ICNF: 158 official ha against 430 ha of perimeter; similar, but with reservations.
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.

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.

Where it burned