Skip to content
worldfires
en
ES · Spain · →

Miera fire, February 2020 Miera

Out · last measured on 18 Feb 2020

The fire started on 15 February 2020 in Miera, Spain, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 203 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 77th largest in Cantabria since 2016 (of 179 with a page). Number 50 in Spain in 2020, of 89.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Soba · 2026Soba · 2024Selaya · 2021Selaya · 2026

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
203ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
4days
15 Feb 2020 – 18 Feb 2020
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
15 Feb
2020
Danger at start
1
Very low · FWI index

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

17°high
65km/h · peak gust
48%lowest humidity

It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 5.0 mm on 25 Feb.

This area had burned before

28% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 57 ha in 2017.

What happened to each town

  1. Miera 397 inhabitants · 0.6 km from the centre where it started
    203 ha
    5.9 %

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 land80 %
  • Scrub and transitional woodland14 %
  • Broadleaved forest6.3 %

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

Official record

Several official records match this area

According to EGIF (MITECO), 3 fires started inside this perimeter on these dates, totalling 153 ha (the satellite measured 203 ha). The two figures differ a lot, so these may not be exactly the same fire: take them as nearby records.

EGIF (MITECO) 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 14 ha 2 122 ha 3 17 ha
10 Feb17 Feb
arson
  1. 1 Miera Respanosa 10 February 2020 14 ha · extinguished on 10 February 2020 · cause: arson
  2. 2 Miera La Cantolla 15 February 2020 · 20:00 122 ha · extinguished on 16 February 2020 · cause: arson
  3. 3 Miera Castrejon 16 February 2020 · 20:48 17 ha · extinguished on 17 February 2020 · cause: arson

Total according to EGIF (MITECO): 153 ha, 76 % of the 203 ha in the satellite perimeter.

MITECO, Estadística General de Incendios Forestales (EGIF). This is the agency’s consolidated statistic: it measures the area in its own way, which is why it can differ from the satellite.

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)
15 Feb 14.4 °C 54 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 1
16 Feb 16.8 °C 48 % 65 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 3
17 Feb 13.9 °C 64 % 54 km/h 5.8 mm Very low 0
18 Feb 9.1 °C 65 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 0
19 Feb after 13.1 °C 47 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 0
20 Feb after 12.8 °C 54 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 1
21 Feb after 14.5 °C 54 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 1
22 Feb after 16.1 °C 47 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 1
23 Feb after 15.9 °C 45 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 2
24 Feb after 15.1 °C 53 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 2
25 Feb after 12.1 °C 76 % 47 km/h 5.0 mm Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 8 Feb 2020
After · 25 Feb 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 20 February 2020 the air beside the fire reached 12 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak12 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1024 µg/m³
131415161718192021
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 Miera fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 15 February 2020 and 18 February 2020: 4 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 203 hectares (2.0 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Miera (203 ha, 5.9 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Miera and came within 0.6 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 16.8 °C, humidity dropped to 48 % and gusts hit 65 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 3, class Very low.
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.

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 EGIF (MITECO): 153 official ha against 203 ha of perimeter; similar, but with reservations.
  • 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.