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Mirandela fire, July 2022 São Pedro Velho, Aguieiras

Out · last measured on 29 Jul 2022

The fire started on 28 July 2022 in São Pedro Velho, Portugal, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 263 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities. According to ICNF, it was detected on 28 July 2022 at 12:06 and declared extinguished on 29 July 2022.

Number 50 in Portugal in 2022, of 107.

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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
263ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
2days
28 Jul 2022 – 29 Jul 2022
Municipalities hit
2
freguesias
Started on
28 Jul
2022
Danger at start
35
High · FWI index

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

31°high
39km/h · peak gust
35%lowest humidity

It had gone 22 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. São Pedro Velho 281 inhabitants · fire reached the centre where it started
    263 ha
    11 %
  2. Aguieiras 246 inhabitants · 1.9 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

  • Agricultural areas54 %
  • Scrub and transitional woodland46 %

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

Official record

According to ICNF, this fire started on 28 July 2022 and burned 275 ha (the satellite measured 263 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)
28 Jul 29.6 °C 37 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
29 Jul 31.3 °C 35 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
30 Jul after 35.2 °C 23 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
31 Jul after 36.2 °C 21 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
1 Aug after 37.3 °C 23 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
2 Aug after 36.5 °C 23 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
3 Aug after 34.8 °C 25 % 35 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 38
4 Aug after 34.4 °C 25 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
5 Aug after 33.5 °C 25 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
6 Aug after 33.5 °C 22 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
7 Aug after 34.3 °C 24 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
8 Aug after 34.2 °C 25 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 21 Jul 2022
After · 5 Aug 2022

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 30 July 2022 the air beside the fire reached 8 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak8 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1012 µg/m³
2627282930311
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 Mirandela fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 28 July 2022 and 29 July 2022: 2 days between the first and last image with fire. According to ICNF, it was detected on 28 July 2022 at 12:06 and declared extinguished on 29 July 2022.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 263 hectares (2.6 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: São Pedro Velho (263 ha, 11 %); Aguieiras (0 ha, 0.0 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in São Pedro Velho 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 31.3 °C, humidity dropped to 35 % and gusts hit 39 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 36, class 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: 275 official ha against 263 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.