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Chaves fire, July 2020 Lama de Arcos, Mairos, Santo António de Monforte

Out · last detection 1 Aug 2020, 02:30 UTC

The fire started on 30 July 2020 in Vila Verde da Raia, Portugal, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 2,793 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 7 municipalities. According to ICNF, it was detected on 30 July 2020 at 13:37 and declared extinguished on 31 July 2020.

It is the 3th largest in Chaves since 2016 (of 13 with a page). Number 4 in Portugal in 2020, of 67.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Chaves · 2017Chaves · 2022Vilarelho Da Raia · 2025Valpaços · 2026

Burnt area
2,793ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
3days
30 Jul 2020 – 1 Aug 2020
Municipalities hit
7
freguesias
Started on
30 Jul
2020
Heat detections
54
in a single hotspot: 185 MW
Danger at start
49
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
871MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 30 Jul1 Aug
1 Aug 2020

How it evolved, day by day

30 Jul 2020 · 1,565 MW · 16 31 Jul 2020 · 1,045 MW · 35 1 Aug 2020 · 3 MW · 3
30 Jul 31 Jul 1 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

34°high
49km/h · peak gust
13%lowest humidity

It had gone 35 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

12% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 340 ha in 2017.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.8% of the area of London (28 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. Lama de Arcos 291 inhabitants · fire reached the centre
    833 ha reached on 30 Jul
    61 %
  2. Mairos 271 inhabitants · fire reached the centre
    731 ha
    62 %
  3. Santo António de Monforte 397 inhabitants · fire reached the centre
    721 ha reached on 31 Jul
    60 %
  4. Travancas e Roriz 454 inhabitants · 1.1 km from the centre
    243 ha
    11 %
  5. Vila Verde da Raia 815 inhabitants · 1.2 km from the centre where it started
    211 ha reached on 30 Jul
    21 %
  6. Paradela 1.4 km from the centre
    50 ha
    6.2 %
  7. Santo Estêvão 1.9 km from the centre
    6 ha reached on 1 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

  • Agricultural areas59 %
  • Scrub and transitional woodland24 %
  • Other natural land13 %
  • Mixed forest2.4 %
  • Coniferous forest1.0 %

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

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2020
Built-up area7.8 ha
Residents≈ 150

Inside the perimeter there were about 7.8 hectares of built-up land and about 150 residents (GHSL 2020, 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 30 July 2020 and burned 2,594 ha (the satellite measured 2,793 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)
30 Jul 34.0 °C 23 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
31 Jul 32.7 °C 13 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
1 Aug 28.9 °C 34 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
2 Aug after 27.6 °C 28 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
3 Aug after 27.5 °C 33 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
4 Aug after 29.6 °C 28 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
5 Aug after 33.0 °C 19 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
6 Aug after 36.1 °C 16 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
7 Aug after 33.6 °C 25 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
8 Aug after 33.2 °C 27 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
9 Aug after 31.7 °C 24 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
10 Aug after 30.3 °C 29 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
11 Aug after 29.3 °C 23 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 23 Jul 2020
After · 8 Aug 2020

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 31 July 2020 the air beside the fire reached 24 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak24 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1045 µg/m³
282930311234
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 · 54Every 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 Chaves fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 30 July 2020 and 1 August 2020: 3 days between the first and last image with fire. According to ICNF, it was detected on 30 July 2020 at 13:37 and declared extinguished on 31 July 2020.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 2,793 hectares (27.9 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 7 municipalities: Lama de Arcos (833 ha, 61 %); Mairos (731 ha, 62 %); Santo António de Monforte (721 ha, 60 %); Travancas e Roriz (243 ha, 11 %); Vila Verde da Raia (211 ha, 21 %); Paradela (50 ha, 6.2 %); Santo Estêvão (6 ha, 0.7 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire reached the centre of Mairos: 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 34.0 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 49 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

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. 54 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • Compared with ICNF: 2,594 official ha against 2,793 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 2020, 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.