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Friões fire, October 2019 Friões, Nogueira da Montanha

Out · last measured on 3 Oct 2019

The fire started on 3 October 2019 in Friões, Portugal, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 104 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.

Number 50 in Portugal in 2019, of 52.

We have the Copernicus perimeter for this fire, but the VIIRS sensors did not capture it in enough detail: no day-by-day evolution, but the split by municipality is there.

Burnt area
104ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
1day
3 Oct 2019 – 3 Oct 2019
Municipalities hit
2
freguesias
Started on
3 Oct
2019
Danger at start
20
Moderate · FWI index

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

23°high
32km/h · peak gust
36%lowest humidity

It had gone 11 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 5.6 mm on 13 Oct.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

What happened to each town

  1. Friões 447 inhabitants · 2.1 km from the town where it started
    83 ha
    3.0 %
  2. Nogueira da Montanha 461 inhabitants · 0.7 km from the town
    21 ha
    1.3 %

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

  • Scrub and transitional woodland51 %
  • Agricultural areas49 %

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)
3 Oct 22.6 °C 36 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
4 Oct after 22.0 °C 49 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
5 Oct after 22.4 °C 37 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
6 Oct after 23.1 °C 36 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
7 Oct after 26.0 °C 26 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
8 Oct after 23.7 °C 52 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
9 Oct after 18.6 °C 37 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
10 Oct after 22.5 °C 29 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
11 Oct after 24.3 °C 39 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
12 Oct after 23.0 °C 42 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
13 Oct after 15.3 °C 82 % 50 km/h 5.6 mm Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 26 Sept 2019
After · 10 Oct 2019

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 1 October 2019 the air beside the fire reached 9 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak9 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1016 µg/m³
123456
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)

Other fires nearby

All fires in Portugal ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Friões fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 3 October 2019 and 3 October 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 104 hectares (1.0 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Friões (83 ha, 3.0 %); Nogueira da Montanha (21 ha, 1.3 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The closest fire to a town centre came within 0.7 km of Nogueira da Montanha. 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 22.6 °C, humidity dropped to 36 % and gusts hit 32 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 20, class Moderate.
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.