Castrelo do Val fire, 15 August 2025 Castrelo do Val, Laza
The fire started on 15 August 2025 in Castrelo do Val, Spain, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 824 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 27th largest in Ourense since 2016 (of 118 with a page). Number 50 in Spain in 2025, of 158.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 824ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 6days
- 15 Aug 2025 – 20 Aug 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- municipalities
- Started on
- 15 Aug
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 52
- in a single hotspot: 86 MW
- Danger at start
- 45
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 184MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
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 one day 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).
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
-
585 ha reached on 18 Aug4.8 %
-
Laza 1,156 inhabitants · 3.6 km from the centre240 ha reached on 17 Aug1.1 %
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 forest57 %
- Scrub and transitional woodland18 %
- Mixed forest13 %
- Other natural land7.9 %
- Agricultural areas3.9 %
Natura 2000 protected area affected: 0 %
- LIC Río Támega ES1130005
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 2025Inside the perimeter there were about 0.37 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
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 15 Aug | 35.7 °C | 19 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 16 Aug | 35.0 °C | 21 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 17 Aug | 33.6 °C | 21 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 18 Aug | 27.7 °C | 34 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 19 Aug | 25.7 °C | 32 % | 54 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 20 Aug | 25.2 °C | 33 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 21 Aug after | 26.9 °C | 34 % | 51 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 22 Aug after | 29.0 °C | 30 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 23 Aug after | 30.4 °C | 25 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 24 Aug after | 31.5 °C | 22 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 25 Aug after | 32.1 °C | 23 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 26 Aug after | 28.1 °C | 26 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 27 Aug after | 22.2 °C | 42 % | 52 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 28 Aug after | 20.7 °C | 40 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 29 Aug after | 23.6 °C | 48 % | 60 km/h | 0.5 mm | High 33 |
| 30 Aug after | 25.9 °C | 37 % | 35 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 26 |
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 17 August 2025 the air beside the fire reached 288 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 143: 9.5 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 · 52Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 24,471 haMonterreiAugust 2025 · 8 days · 12 km away
- 3,634 haLazaAugust 2022 · 7 days · 14 km away
- 7,090 haVilariño de ConsoJuly 2022 · 10 days · 21 km away
- 3,493 haVilarelho Da RaiaAugust 2025 · 2 days · 22 km away
- 30,754 haChandrexa de QueixaAugust 2025 · 20 days · 25 km away
- 12,026 haA MezquitaAugust 2025 · 9 days · 30 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Castrelo do Val fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 15 August 2025 to 20 August 2025 (6 days). The perimeter dates it from 15 August 2025 to 17 August 2025.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 824 hectares (8.2 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Castrelo do Val (585 ha, 4.8 %); Laza (240 ha, 1.1 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire started in Castrelo do Val 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 35.7 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 49, class Very 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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 15 August 2025 to 17 August 2025. 52 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 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.