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Marvão fire, August 2020 Santo António das Areias

Out · last measured on 20 Aug 2020

The fire started on 19 August 2020 in Santo António das Areias, Portugal, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 488 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality. According to ICNF, it was detected on 18 August 2020 at 16:25 and declared extinguished on 18 August 2020.

Number 24 in Portugal in 2020, of 67.

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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
488ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
2days
19 Aug 2020 – 20 Aug 2020
Municipalities hit
1
freguesias
Started on
19 Aug
2020
Danger at start
46
Very high · FWI index
Natura 2000
100%
of the perimeter is protected land

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

32°high
45km/h · peak gust
18%lowest humidity

It had gone 28 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. Santo António das Areias 961 inhabitants · 0.8 km from the centre where it started
    488 ha
    14 %

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 land38 %
  • Sclerophyllous scrub36 %
  • Agricultural areas17 %
  • Scrub and transitional woodland9.6 %

Natura 2000 protected area affected: 100 %

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.

Official record

According to ICNF, this fire started on 18 August 2020 and burned 493 ha (the satellite measured 488 ha).

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)
19 Aug 32.3 °C 18 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
20 Aug 29.6 °C 43 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
21 Aug after 28.6 °C 38 % 36 km/h 0.2 mm High 32
22 Aug after 32.4 °C 15 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
23 Aug after 33.9 °C 15 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
24 Aug after 36.5 °C 14 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
25 Aug after 36.5 °C 17 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
26 Aug after 36.5 °C 18 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
27 Aug after 35.3 °C 25 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
28 Aug after 28.8 °C 20 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
29 Aug after 25.7 °C 23 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
30 Aug after 26.6 °C 19 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 12 Aug 2020
After · 27 Aug 2020

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 19 August 2020 the air beside the fire reached 6 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak6 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1016 µg/m³
17181920212223
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 Marvão fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 19 August 2020 and 20 August 2020: 2 days between the first and last image with fire. According to ICNF, it was detected on 18 August 2020 at 16:25 and declared extinguished on 18 August 2020.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 488 hectares (4.9 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Santo António das Areias (488 ha, 14 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Santo António das Areias and came within 0.8 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 32.3 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, class Very high.
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.

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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: 493 official ha against 488 ha of perimeter; they agree within 25%.
  • 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 (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.