How long did the Leiria fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 12 July 2022 to 15 July 2022 (4 days). The perimeter dates it from 12 July 2022 to 13 July 2022. According to ICNF, the largest of the 3 recorded fires was detected on 12 July 2022 at 12:06 and declared extinguished on 16 July 2022.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 3,691 hectares (36.9 km²). Official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 6 municipalities: Colmeias e Memória (2,748 ha, 59 %); Caranguejeira (323 ha, 10 %); Espite (214 ha, 11 %); Santa Eufémia e Boa Vista (210 ha, 11 %); Milagres (100 ha, 5.8 %); União das Freguesias de Matas e Cercal (99 ha, 4.8 %).

Did the fire reach a town?

The fire started in Colmeias e Memória and reached its centre: 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 41.6 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 57 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 59, class Extreme.

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.

PT · Portugal · 2022-07-12 → 2022-07-15

Leiria fire, July 2022 Colmeias e Memória, Caranguejeira, Espite

Out · last detection 15 Jul 2022, 14:25 UTC

The fire started on 12 July 2022 in Colmeias e Memória, Portugal, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 3,691 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 6 municipalities. According to ICNF, the largest of the 3 recorded fires was detected on 12 July 2022 at 12:06 and declared extinguished on 16 July 2022.

Number 5 in Portugal in 2022, of 107.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Caranguejeira · 2016 Ourém · 2022 Pombal · 2017 Pinhal de Leiria · 2017

Burnt area: 3,691ha; Copernicus perimeter
Duration: 4days; 12 Jul 2022 – 15 Jul 2022
Municipalities hit: 6; freguesias
Started on: 12 Jul; 2022
Heat detections: 75; in a single hotspot: 33 MW
Danger at start: 54; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 194MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 12 Jul15 Jul

Play back 15 Jul 2022

How it evolved, day by day

13 Jul 15 Jul

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

42°high

57km/h · peak gust

12%lowest humidity

It had gone 8 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

2% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 75 ha in 2016.

75 ha Caranguejeira fire, September 2016 348 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2.3% of the area of London (37 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

Colmeias e Memória 3,746 inhabitants · fire reached the centre where it started

2,748 ha reached on 13 Jul

59 %
Caranguejeira 4,331 inhabitants · 2.7 km from the centre

323 ha reached on 13 Jul

10 %
Espite 986 inhabitants · 2.0 km from the centre

214 ha reached on 13 Jul

11 %
Santa Eufémia e Boa Vista 4,058 inhabitants · 1.6 km from the centre

210 ha reached on 13 Jul

11 %
Milagres 2,829 inhabitants · 4.0 km from the centre

100 ha

5.8 %
União das Freguesias de Matas e Cercal 944 inhabitants · 1.1 km from the centre

99 ha

4.8 %

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

Agricultural areas33 %
Broadleaved forest22 %
Coniferous forest15 %
Mixed forest14 %
Scrub and transitional woodland13 %
Artificial surfaces3.5 %

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

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2020

Built-up area48 ha

Residents≈ 1,800

Inside the perimeter there were about 48 hectares of built-up land and about 1,800 residents (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

Official record

Complex of 3 fires according to ICNF

According to ICNF, 3 fires started inside this perimeter on these dates, totalling 4,093 ha (the satellite measured 3,691 ha).

ICNF records each fire that started at a different time or place separately; the satellite sees a single burned area, so this page groups them together. The numbers on the map show where each one started.

When each one burned

1 2,787 ha 2 1,260 ha 3 45 ha

12 Jul17 Jul

arson

1 Leiria Caranguejeira 12 July 2022 · 12:06 2,787 ha · extinguished on 16 July 2022 · cause: arson
2 Ourém Espite 12 July 2022 · 12:07 1,260 ha · extinguished on 17 July 2022 · cause: arson
3 Ourém Matas 13 July 2022 · 11:58 45 ha · extinguished on 17 July 2022 · cause: arson

Total according to ICNF: 4,093 ha, 111 % of the 3,691 ha in the satellite perimeter.

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)
12 Jul	40.5 °C	13 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
13 Jul	41.6 °C	12 %	57 km/h	0.1 mm	Extreme 52
14 Jul	38.4 °C	16 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 59
15 Jul	34.5 °C	23 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
16 Jul after	34.8 °C	26 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
17 Jul after	34.9 °C	26 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
18 Jul after	28.3 °C	41 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
19 Jul after	25.2 °C	49 %	45 km/h	0.1 mm	High 30
20 Jul after	29.7 °C	41 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
21 Jul after	27.0 °C	52 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
22 Jul after	29.4 °C	44 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
23 Jul after	30.4 °C	41 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
24 Jul after	28.9 °C	43 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
25 Jul after	28.9 °C	42 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 5 Jul 2022

After · 22 Jul 2022

Before After

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 13 July 2022 the air beside the fire reached 36 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 22: 1.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak36 µg/m³

Days over the guideline3 days

PM1058 µg/m³

WHO 15

10111213141516

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)

Detections table · 75Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.

⬇ Download CSV Times in UTC. Each detection is a 375 m pixel: a large fire yields hundreds per pass.

Date and time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Portugal ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Leiria fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 12 July 2022 to 15 July 2022 (4 days). The perimeter dates it from 12 July 2022 to 13 July 2022. According to ICNF, the largest of the 3 recorded fires was detected on 12 July 2022 at 12:06 and declared extinguished on 16 July 2022.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 3,691 hectares (36.9 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 6 municipalities: Colmeias e Memória (2,748 ha, 59 %); Caranguejeira (323 ha, 10 %); Espite (214 ha, 11 %); Santa Eufémia e Boa Vista (210 ha, 11 %); Milagres (100 ha, 5.8 %); União das Freguesias de Matas e Cercal (99 ha, 4.8 %).
Did the fire reach a town?: The fire started in Colmeias e Memória and reached its centre: 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 41.6 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 57 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 59, class Extreme.
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

NASA FIRMS ↗
EFFIS · Copernicus ↗

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.

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What really happened?

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How we know this

Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 12 July 2022 to 13 July 2022. 75 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
Compared with ICNF: 4,093 official ha against 3,691 ha of perimeter; they agree within 25%.
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.

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.

Where it burned