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Covilhã fire, July 2020 Sobral de São Miguel, Casegas, Teixeira

Out · last detection 31 Jul 2020, 12:32 UTC

The fire started on 29 July 2020 in Sobral de São Miguel, Portugal, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 1,096 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 4 municipalities. According to ICNF, it was detected on 29 July 2020 at 14:43 and declared extinguished on 1 August 2020.

Number 9 in Portugal in 2020, of 67.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Arganil · 2025Cambas · 2017Oleiros · 2017Seia · 2017

Burnt area
1,096ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
3days
29 Jul 2020 – 31 Jul 2020
Municipalities hit
4
freguesias
Started on
29 Jul
2020
Heat detections
117
in a single hotspot: 165 MW
Danger at start
45
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
1.7GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 29 Jul31 Jul
31 Jul 2020

How it evolved, day by day

30 Jul 2020 · 3,335 MW · 112 31 Jul 2020 · 42 MW · 5
30 Jul 31 Jul

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
43km/h · peak gust
17%lowest humidity

It had gone 7 days 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?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 0.7% of the area of London (11 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. Sobral de São Miguel 294 inhabitants · fire reached the centre where it started
    1,045 ha reached on 30 Jul
    44 %
  2. Casegas 425 inhabitants · 2.8 km from the centre
    43 ha reached on 31 Jul
    0.9 %
  3. Teixeira 144 inhabitants · 2.5 km from the centre
    5 ha reached on 30 Jul
    0.3 %
  4. União das Freguesias de Vide e Cabeça 570 inhabitants · 6.1 km from the centre
    5 ha reached on 30 Jul
    0.1 %

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

  • Scrub and transitional woodland61 %
  • Other natural land35 %
  • Coniferous forest3.8 %

Natura 2000 protected area affected: 2 %

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.

Official record

According to ICNF, this fire started on 29 July 2020 and burned 1,084 ha (the satellite measured 1,096 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)
29 Jul 34.4 °C 17 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
30 Jul 32.1 °C 21 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
31 Jul 31.5 °C 28 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
1 Aug after 28.2 °C 38 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
2 Aug after 28.5 °C 34 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
3 Aug after 26.8 °C 35 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
4 Aug after 31.2 °C 23 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
5 Aug after 33.2 °C 21 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
6 Aug after 34.2 °C 22 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
7 Aug after 32.4 °C 25 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
8 Aug after 31.1 °C 32 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
9 Aug after 29.5 °C 24 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
10 Aug after 28.8 °C 26 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 22 Jul 2020
After · 7 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 30 July 2020 the air beside the fire reached 51 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 24: 1.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak51 µg/m³
Days over the guideline1 day
PM1066 µg/m³
2728293031123
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 · 117Every 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 Covilhã fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 29 July 2020 and 31 July 2020: 3 days between the first and last image with fire. According to ICNF, it was detected on 29 July 2020 at 14:43 and declared extinguished on 1 August 2020.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,096 hectares (11.0 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 4 municipalities: Sobral de São Miguel (1,045 ha, 44 %); Casegas (43 ha, 0.9 %); Teixeira (5 ha, 0.3 %); União das Freguesias de Vide e Cabeça (5 ha, 0.1 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Sobral de São Miguel 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 34.4 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 43 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 48, 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. 117 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • Compared with ICNF: 1,084 official ha against 1,096 ha of perimeter; they agree within 25%.
  • Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.

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.