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Guimarães fire, October 2017 Nogueira, Fraião e Lamaçães, Esporões, Morreira e Trandeiras

Out · last measured on 16 Oct 2017

The fire started on 16 October 2017 in Esporões, Portugal, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 766 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 9 municipalities.

Number 72 in Portugal in 2017, of 210.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Vieira do Minho · 2016Barcelos · 2016Celorico de Basto · 2024Ponte da Barca · 2025

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
766ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
1day
16 Oct 2017 – 16 Oct 2017
Municipalities hit
9
freguesias
Started on
16 Oct
2017
Danger at start
1
Very low · FWI index

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

19°high
48km/h · peak gust
55%lowest humidity

It had gone 21 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 25.8 mm on 17 Oct.

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 0.5% of the area of London (7.7 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. Nogueira, Fraião e Lamaçães 15,017 inhabitants · 1.0 km from the centre
    220 ha
    26 %
  2. Esporões 1,713 inhabitants · 0.8 km from the centre where it started
    200 ha
    43 %
  3. Morreira e Trandeiras 1,364 inhabitants · fire reached the centre
    160 ha
    35 %
  4. Nogueiró e Tenões 5,947 inhabitants · 0.5 km from the centre
    61 ha
    14 %
  5. Longos 1,339 inhabitants · 0.8 km from the centre
    39 ha
    5.3 %
  6. Leitões, Oleiros e Figueiredo 1,437 inhabitants · 1.7 km from the centre
    37 ha
    4.2 %
  7. Sande (São Lourenço) e Balazar 1,584 inhabitants · 2.3 km from the centre
    26 ha
    4.0 %
  8. Espinho 0.9 km from the centre
    23 ha
    5.1 %
  9. União das Freguesias de Sande (Vila Nova) e Sande (São Clemente) 1,739 inhabitants · 5.1 km from the centre
    0 ha
    0.0 %

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 woodland47 %
  • Mixed forest34 %
  • Broadleaved forest13 %
  • Agricultural areas2.9 %
  • Artificial surfaces2.0 %
  • Coniferous forest0.9 %

Land cover inside the perimeter according to Corine Land Cover, as reported by Copernicus.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2015
Built-up area4.3 ha
Residents≈ 250

Inside the perimeter there were about 4.3 hectares of built-up land and about 250 residents (GHSL 2015, 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

Official record

According to ICNF, this fire started on 12 October 2017 and burned 1,007 ha (the satellite measured 766 ha). The two figures differ a lot, so these may not be exactly the same fire: take them as nearby records.

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)
16 Oct 19.4 °C 55 % 48 km/h 11.8 mm Very low 1
17 Oct after 17.4 °C 48 % 45 km/h 25.8 mm Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 9 Oct 2017
After · 23 Oct 2017

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 15 October 2017 the air beside the fire reached 69 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 32: 2.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak69 µg/m³
Days over the guideline3 days
PM10104 µg/m³
141516171819
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 Guimarães fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 16 October 2017 and 16 October 2017: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 766 hectares (7.7 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 9 municipalities: Nogueira, Fraião e Lamaçães (220 ha, 26 %); Esporões (200 ha, 43 %); Morreira e Trandeiras (160 ha, 35 %); Nogueiró e Tenões (61 ha, 14 %); Longos (39 ha, 5.3 %); Leitões, Oleiros e Figueiredo (37 ha, 4.2 %); Sande (São Lourenço) e Balazar (26 ha, 4.0 %); Espinho (23 ha, 5.1 %); União das Freguesias de Sande (Vila Nova) e Sande (São Clemente) (0 ha, 0.0 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire reached the centre of Morreira e Trandeiras: 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 19.4 °C, humidity dropped to 55 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 1, class Very 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 ›

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. No Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • Compared with ICNF: 1,007 official ha against 766 ha of perimeter; similar, but with reservations.
  • 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 2015, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

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.