Espinhosela fire, January 2022 Espinhosela, Parâmio, Carragosa
The fire started on 28 January 2022 in Espinhosela, Portugal, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 697 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 3 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.
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- Burnt area
- 697ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 2days
- 28 Jan 2022 – 29 Jan 2022
- Municipalities hit
- 3
- freguesias
- Started on
- 28 Jan
- 2022
- Heat detections
- 45
- in a single hotspot: 201 MW
- Danger at start
- 6
- Low · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 971MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
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 18 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?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Lisbon boundary: geoBoundaries · geoBoundaries, DG Territory (CC0 1.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
491 ha reached on 28 Jan13 %
-
Parâmio 195 inhabitants · 2.7 km from the centre161 ha reached on 28 Jan7.2 %
-
Carragosa 162 inhabitants · 7.2 km from the centre35 ha reached on 29 Jan1.2 %
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 woodland51 %
- Other natural land35 %
- Coniferous forest12 %
- Agricultural areas1.9 %
Natura 2000 protected area affected: 99 %
- ZEPA + LIC Montesinho / Nogueira PTCON0002 · PTZPE0003
- LIC Riberas del Río Tuela y afluentes ES4190131
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 28 Jan | 13.0 °C | 19 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 6 |
| 29 Jan | 15.1 °C | 16 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 7 |
| 30 Jan after | 15.0 °C | 14 % | 19 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 7 |
| 31 Jan after | 14.7 °C | 26 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 7 |
| 1 Feb after | 14.9 °C | 44 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 6 |
| 2 Feb after | 17.7 °C | 30 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 6 |
| 3 Feb after | 13.4 °C | 36 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 6 |
| 4 Feb after | 9.2 °C | 72 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 3 |
| 5 Feb after | 10.9 °C | 48 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 3 |
| 6 Feb after | 12.8 °C | 38 % | 18 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 4 |
| 7 Feb after | 16.3 °C | 34 % | 18 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 6 |
| 8 Feb after | 14.6 °C | 29 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 6 |
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 28 January 2022 the air beside the fire reached 12 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 · 45Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Espinhosela fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 28 January 2022 and 29 January 2022: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 697 hectares (7.0 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 3 municipalities: Espinhosela (491 ha, 13 %); Parâmio (161 ha, 7.2 %); Carragosa (35 ha, 1.2 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire came within 2.7 km of the centre of Parâmio, 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 15.1 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 35 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 7, 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 · 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.
Report an error
How we know this
- Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 45 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.
- Probably a vegetation burn: not counted in the totals.
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.