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Cabração e Moreira do Lima fire, August 2016 Cabração e Moreira do Lima, Montaria, Arga (Baixo, Cima e São João)

Out · last detection 12 Aug 2016, 13:42 UTC

The fire started on 8 August 2016 in Cabração e Moreira do Lima, Portugal, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 9,224 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 13 municipalities.

It is the largest fire in Ponte de Lima since 2016 (of 11 with a page). Number 2 in Portugal in 2016, of 180.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Nogueira, Meixedo e Vilar de Murteda · 2016Caminha · 2016Barcelos · 2016Arcos de Valdevez · 2016

Burnt area
9,224ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
5days
8 Aug 2016 – 12 Aug 2016
Municipalities hit
13
freguesias
Started on
8 Aug
2016
Heat detections
659
in a single hotspot: 280 MW
Danger at start
31
High · FWI index
Average daily power
1.8GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 8 Aug12 Aug
12 Aug 2016

How it evolved, day by day

8 Aug 2016 · 1,301 MW · 64 9 Aug 2016 · 6,489 MW · 443 10 Aug 2016 · 914 MW · 107 11 Aug 2016 · 195 MW · 42 12 Aug 2016 · 10 MW · 3
8 Aug 9 Aug 10 Aug 11 Aug 12 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

29°high
55km/h · peak gust
31%lowest humidity

It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.4 mm on 17 Aug.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 5.8% of the area of London (92 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

  1. Cabração e Moreira do Lima 899 inhabitants · fire reached the centre where it started
    2,362 ha reached on 8 Aug
    86 %
  2. Montaria 450 inhabitants · fire reached the centre
    1,673 ha reached on 9 Aug
    74 %
  3. Arga (Baixo, Cima e São João) 159 inhabitants · 1.3 km from the centre
    1,239 ha reached on 9 Aug
    40 %
  4. São Pedro d'Arcos 602 inhabitants · fire reached the centre
    978 ha reached on 9 Aug
    65 %
  5. Estorãos 408 inhabitants · fire reached the centre
    963 ha reached on 9 Aug
    60 %
  6. Nogueira, Meixedo e Vilar de Murteda 1,433 inhabitants · 1.2 km from the centre
    720 ha reached on 9 Aug
    26 %
  7. Lanheses 1,517 inhabitants · fire reached the centre
    290 ha reached on 9 Aug
    30 %
  8. Arcozelo fire reached the centre
    228 ha reached on 9 Aug
    19 %
  9. Coura 330 inhabitants · fire reached the centre
    207 ha reached on 8 Aug
    31 %
  10. Labruja 384 inhabitants · 1.3 km from the centre
    202 ha reached on 9 Aug
    14 %
  11. Dem 309 inhabitants · fire reached the centre
    161 ha reached on 11 Aug
    25 %
  12. Romarigães 224 inhabitants · 1.0 km from the centre
    106 ha reached on 8 Aug
    14 %
  13. Covas 603 inhabitants · 3.2 km from the centre
    105 ha reached on 8 Aug
    3.7 %

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 woodland52 %
  • Other natural land39 %
  • Agricultural areas4.9 %
  • Artificial surfaces1.8 %
  • Coniferous forest1.7 %
  • Mixed forest1.0 %

Natura 2000 protected area affected: 39 %

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.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2015
Built-up area28 ha
Residents≈ 1,000

Inside the perimeter there were about 28 hectares of built-up land and about 1,000 residents (GHSL 2015, 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

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)
8 Aug 29.4 °C 35 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
9 Aug 24.5 °C 45 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
10 Aug 25.0 °C 31 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
11 Aug 24.4 °C 32 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
12 Aug 25.5 °C 33 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
13 Aug after 21.9 °C 45 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
14 Aug after 20.2 °C 62 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
15 Aug after 20.0 °C 58 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
16 Aug after 18.7 °C 61 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
17 Aug after 18.6 °C 72 % 36 km/h 1.4 mm Low 8

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 1 Aug 2016
After · 19 Aug 2016

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

Detections table · 659Every 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 Cabração e Moreira do Lima fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 8 August 2016 and 12 August 2016: 5 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 9,224 hectares (92.2 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 13 municipalities: Cabração e Moreira do Lima (2,362 ha, 86 %); Montaria (1,673 ha, 74 %); Arga (Baixo, Cima e São João) (1,239 ha, 40 %); São Pedro d'Arcos (978 ha, 65 %); Estorãos (963 ha, 60 %); Nogueira, Meixedo e Vilar de Murteda (720 ha, 26 %); Lanheses (290 ha, 30 %); Arcozelo (228 ha, 19 %); Coura (207 ha, 31 %); Labruja (202 ha, 14 %); Dem (161 ha, 25 %); Romarigães (106 ha, 14 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Cabração e Moreira do Lima 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 29.4 °C, humidity dropped to 31 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 34, 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. 659 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 2015, 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.