Cumeada e Marmeleiro fire, July 2019 Cumeada e Marmeleiro, Cernache do Bonjardim, Nesperal e Palhais, Sertã
The fire started on 21 July 2019 in Cumeada e Marmeleiro, Portugal, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 209 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 3 municipalities.
Number 26 in Portugal in 2019, of 52.
The power measured by the satellite is low (1.2 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
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- Burnt area
- 209ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 1day
- 21 Jul 2019 – 21 Jul 2019
- Municipalities hit
- 3
- freguesias
- Started on
- 21 Jul
- 2019
- Heat detections
- 2
- in a single hotspot: 1 MW
- Danger at start
- 28
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 2MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
21 Jul 2019 · 2 MW · 2
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 7 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.1 mm on 27 Jul.
This area had burned before
No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.
What happened to each town
-
112 ha reached on 21 Jul2.2 %
-
Cernache do Bonjardim, Nesperal e Palhais 3,364 inhabitants · 3.8 km from the centre97 ha reached on 21 Jul1.0 %
-
Sertã 6,039 inhabitants · 4.2 km from the centre0 ha0.0 %
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 woodland96 %
- Agricultural areas4.3 %
Land cover inside the perimeter according to Corine Land Cover, as reported by Copernicus.
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2020Inside the perimeter there were about 0.43 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 21 Jul | 30.8 °C | 40 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 22 Jul after | 32.8 °C | 34 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 23 Jul after | 29.9 °C | 41 % | 45 km/h | 0.4 mm | High 34 |
| 24 Jul after | 31.4 °C | 32 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 25 Jul after | 27.5 °C | 50 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 26 Jul after | 24.0 °C | 46 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 27 Jul after | 23.7 °C | 58 % | 37 km/h | 2.1 mm | Low 8 |
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 22 July 2019 the air beside the fire reached 20 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO 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 · 2Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 25,305 haFerreira do Zêzere Nossa Senhora do PrantoAugust 2017 · 9 days · 7 km away
- 9,924 haVila de Rei CardigosJuly 2019 · 3 days · 11 km away
- 46,769 haPedrógão GrandeJune 2017 · 10 days · 17 km away
- 36,849 haSertã Várzea dos Cavaleiros23 July 2017 · 6 days · 29 km away
- 34,844 haOleiros MadeirãOctober 2017 · 8 days · 30 km away
- 15,536 haProença-a-Nova União das freguesias de Sobreira Formosa e Alvito da BeiraSeptember 2020 · 8 days · 32 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Cumeada e Marmeleiro fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 21 July 2019 and 21 July 2019: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 209 hectares (2.1 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 3 municipalities: Cumeada e Marmeleiro (112 ha, 2.2 %); Cernache do Bonjardim, Nesperal e Palhais (97 ha, 1.0 %); Sertã (0 ha, 0.0 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire came within 3.8 km of the centre of Cernache do Bonjardim, Nesperal e Palhais, the closest of the areas it touched. That is the distance from the perimeter, or the nearest hotspot, to the point marking the centre; it does not mean it entered the houses.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 30.8 °C, humidity dropped to 40 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 28, class 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 ›
- ICNF · Instituto da Conservação da Natureza e das Florestas ↗
- ANEPC · Proteção Civil ↗
- Fogos.pt (ocorrências em tempo real) ↗
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.
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How we know this
- Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 2 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 2020, 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 (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.