Skip to content
worldfires
PT · Portugal · →

Cinfães fire, March 2021 Cinfães, Nespereira

Out · last detection 19 Mar 2021, 13:40 UTC

The fire started on 18 March 2021 in Cinfães, Portugal, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 218 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.

This entry is most likely a pasture burn or a prescribed winter burn in northern Portugal, not a wildfire. In these hills scrub is burnt to renew grazing, and this fire is not in the ICNF register of rural fires. This is our assumption, based on the time of year and the lack of an official record; it is not confirmed. That is why it is left out of the wildfire rankings.

The power measured by the satellite is low (9.9 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Burnt area
218ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
2days
18 Mar 2021 – 19 Mar 2021
Municipalities hit
2
freguesias
Started on
18 Mar
2021
Heat detections
11
in a single hotspot: 10 MW
Danger at start
6
Low · FWI index
Energy released
35MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

19 Mar 2021
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 18 Mar19 Mar

How it evolved, day by day

1819

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

The weather it burned in

13°high
50km/h · peak gust
37%lowest humidity

It had gone 6 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

94% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 163 ha in 2016, 170 ha in 2017, 2 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 205 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Cinfães 3,080 inhabitants · 3.6 km from the town where it started
    208 ha reached on 18 Mar
    8.2 %
  2. Nespereira 1,695 inhabitants · 4.6 km from the town
    10 ha
    0.3 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the official perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

What burned

  • Other natural land100 %

Natura 2000 protected area affected: 100 %

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.

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)
18 Mar 12.4 °C 37 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Low 6
19 Mar 12.6 °C 46 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Low 5
20 Mar after 10.5 °C 35 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Low 6
21 Mar after 11.9 °C 38 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Low 5
22 Mar after 13.9 °C 40 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 5
23 Mar after 15.7 °C 37 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 5
24 Mar after 13.2 °C 48 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Low 5
25 Mar after 13.8 °C 46 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Low 5
26 Mar after 10.8 °C 56 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 5
27 Mar after 14.4 °C 43 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Low 6
28 Mar after 18.2 °C 37 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Low 7
29 Mar after 14.8 °C 47 % 40 km/h 0.2 mm Low 7

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 11 Mar 2021
After · 26 Mar 2021

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 22 March 2021 the air beside the fire reached 26 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak26 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1040 µg/m³
16171819202122
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 · 11Every 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 Cinfães fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 18 March 2021 and 19 March 2021: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 218 hectares (2.2 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Cinfães (208 ha, 8.2 %); Nespereira (10 ha, 0.3 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The closest fire to a town centre came within 3.6 km of Cinfães. That is the distance to the perimeter or nearest hotspot; it does not mean it entered the houses.
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 12.6 °C, humidity dropped to 37 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 6, class Low.
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

Satellite cross-check

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.

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.