Skip to content
worldfires
en
PT · Portugal · →

Celorico da Beira fire, August 2016 Cortiçô da Serra, Vide entre Vinhas e Salgueirais, Mesquitela, Celorico (São Pedro e Santa Maria) e Vila Boa do Mondego

Out · last detection 15 Aug 2016, 12:45 UTC

The fire started on 15 August 2016 in Cortiçô da Serra, Vide entre Vinhas e Salgueirais, Portugal, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 678 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 4 municipalities. According to ICNF, it was detected on 14 August 2016 at 15:38 and declared extinguished on 15 August 2016.

Number 47 in Portugal in 2016, of 180.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Serra da Estrela · 2022Penalva do Castelo · 2024Seia · 2017Guarda · 2025

Burnt area
678ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
1day
15 Aug 2016 – 15 Aug 2016
Municipalities hit
4
freguesias
Started on
15 Aug
2016
Heat detections
5
in a single hotspot: 36 MW
Danger at start
42
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
46MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 Aug15 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

15 Aug 2016 · 46 MW · 5

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

The weather it burned in

32°high
40km/h · peak gust
26%lowest humidity

It had gone 38 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.5 mm on 24 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 0.4% of the area of London (6.8 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. Cortiçô da Serra, Vide entre Vinhas e Salgueirais 362 inhabitants · fire reached the centre where it started
    328 ha reached on 15 Aug
    15 %
  2. Mesquitela 203 inhabitants · 1.1 km from the centre
    277 ha
    16 %
  3. Celorico (São Pedro e Santa Maria) e Vila Boa do Mondego 2,067 inhabitants · 3.1 km from the centre
    54 ha
    1.3 %
  4. Casas do Soeiro 469 inhabitants · 1.7 km from the centre
    20 ha
    3.3 %

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 woodland42 %
  • Agricultural areas29 %
  • Other natural land29 %

Natura 2000 protected area affected: 1 %

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 area3.6 ha
Residents≈ 90

Inside the perimeter there were about 3.6 hectares of built-up land and about 90 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

Official record

According to ICNF, this fire started on 14 August 2016 and burned 602 ha (the satellite measured 678 ha).

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)
15 Aug 31.9 °C 26 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
16 Aug after 30.0 °C 30 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
17 Aug after 27.4 °C 45 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
18 Aug after 29.6 °C 32 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
19 Aug after 25.8 °C 59 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
20 Aug after 26.5 °C 29 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
21 Aug after 32.0 °C 16 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
22 Aug after 35.9 °C 16 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
23 Aug after 36.2 °C 27 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
24 Aug after 33.9 °C 34 % 27 km/h 3.5 mm Moderate 12

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 8 Aug 2016
After · 22 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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 13 August 2016 the air beside the fire reached 61 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 42: 2.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak61 µg/m³
Days over the guideline4 days
PM1070 µg/m³
131415161718
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 · 5Every 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 Celorico da Beira fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 15 August 2016 and 15 August 2016: 1 day between the first and last image with fire. According to ICNF, it was detected on 14 August 2016 at 15:38 and declared extinguished on 15 August 2016.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 678 hectares (6.8 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 4 municipalities: Cortiçô da Serra, Vide entre Vinhas e Salgueirais (328 ha, 15 %); Mesquitela (277 ha, 16 %); Celorico (São Pedro e Santa Maria) e Vila Boa do Mondego (54 ha, 1.3 %); Casas do Soeiro (20 ha, 3.3 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Cortiçô da Serra, Vide entre Vinhas e Salgueirais 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 31.9 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, class Very 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.

Report an error
What do you think is wrong?

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. 5 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • Compared with ICNF: 602 official ha against 678 ha of perimeter; they agree within 25%.
  • 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.