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ES · Spain · –

La Carolina fire, July 2025 La Carolina

Out · last measured on 4 Jul 2025

The fire started on 3 July 2025 in La Carolina, Spain, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 215 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

Number 105 in Spain in 2025, of 158.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Viso del Marqués · 2019Paracuellos · 2016Santa Elena · 2026Viso del Marqués · 2026

We have the Copernicus perimeter for this fire, but not yet its hotspots: NASA publishes the yearly hotspot archive only once the year closes. The page picks it up automatically when it is available.

Burnt area
215ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
2days
3 Jul 2025 – 4 Jul 2025
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
3 Jul
2025
Danger at start
53
Extreme · FWI index

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

41°high
40km/h · peak gust
13%lowest humidity

It had gone 8 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.

What happened to each town

  1. La Carolina 14,677 inhabitants · 1.2 km from the centre where it started
    215 ha
    1.1 %

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

  • Other natural land93 %
  • Agricultural areas7.2 %

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)

Started with Very dry air: 25 % of the area in Spain

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
3 Jul 40.6 °C 14 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
4 Jul 40.2 °C 13 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
5 Jul after 39.4 °C 16 % 40 km/h 0.1 mm Extreme 64
6 Jul after 37.2 °C 21 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
7 Jul after 39.7 °C 17 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
8 Jul after 38.6 °C 21 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
9 Jul after 37.8 °C 22 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
10 Jul after 37.5 °C 17 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
11 Jul after 33.2 °C 21 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
12 Jul after 29.5 °C 31 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
13 Jul after 35.2 °C 12 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
14 Jul after 38.9 °C 15 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 52.9, a minimum humidity of 14% and 8 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 30.

FWI at the start 52.9
Minimum humidity 14 %
Days without rain 8
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

Viso del Marqués fire, July 2019
112 ha 1 day FWI 51.2 Min. humidity 16 % 34 km away, in 2019

First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.

See its page Compare with this fire

What happened to them

1 day
median duration
272 ha
median area
17 %
went past 1,000 ha
1.4 mm
rain at the end (median; 11 of 30 had it)

It burned an area similar to its twins (215 ha against a median of 272 ha) and lasted 2 days, against 1 day.

In 19 of 30, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 1.4 mm.

This is a bank of analogues: it shows what usually happens, not what will happen. With fewer than 15 twins we give no figures. How we calculate it

How it ended

—first rain
—no rain in ten days
40km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 4 Jul, and not even 1 mm fell in the following ten days: it went out without rain. Twins with rain when they ended: 11 of 30, with a median of 1.4 mm.

Weather on this page: Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

How a twin is chosen

  • Same area: fires that have already ended, less than 250 km from this one, since 2016.
  • Same start: we compare the FWI on the first day, the minimum humidity that day and the run of days without rain before it. The slider sets how much they may differ.
  • Only pages with final weather data (ERA5 reanalysis) calculated in the same way as this fire’s; agricultural and grass burns and pages with data under review are left out.
  • Fires burning at the same time as this one (a week before or after) are left out: they share the same spell of weather and do not count as a precedent.
  • They are sorted by similarity, and the outlines of the first five are drawn.

How we calculate it

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 26 Jun 2025
After · 11 Jul 2025

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 7 July 2025 the air beside the fire reached 11 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak11 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1019 µg/m³
Optical depth0.34
1 Jul3 Jul5 Jul7 Jul
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 Spain

Frequently asked questions

How long did the La Carolina fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 3 July 2025 and 4 July 2025: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 215 hectares (2.2 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered La Carolina (215 ha, 1.1 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in La Carolina and came within 1.2 km of its centre. 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 40.6 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 55, class Extreme.
Where does this data come from?
From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Spain (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.
How did the fires that started in similar weather in this area end?
Fires less than 250 km away that started since 2016 with a similar FWI, humidity and dry spell: 30. Their median duration was 1 day and their median area 272 ha; 17 % went past 1,000 ha. In 19 of 30, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 1.4 mm.

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 With cross-checks and a citable version

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.
  • We have not matched this page with any official record.
  • 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 (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)). 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.