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Montalegre fire, October 2020 Ardãos e Bobadela, Vilar de Perdizes e Meixide, Sarraquinhos

Out · last detection 13 Oct 2020, 03:02 UTC

The fire started on 13 October 2020 in Ardãos e Bobadela, Portugal, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 144 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 3 municipalities. According to ICNF, it was detected on 12 October 2020 at 17:36 and declared extinguished on 13 October 2020.

Number 58 in Portugal in 2020, of 67.

The power measured by the satellite is low (2.3 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

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Burnt area
144ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
1day
13 Oct 2020 – 13 Oct 2020
Municipalities hit
3
freguesias
Started on
13 Oct
2020
Heat detections
3
in a single hotspot: 2 MW
Danger at start
10
Low · FWI index
Average daily power
6MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 13 Oct13 Oct

How it evolved, day by day

13 Oct 2020 · 6 MW · 3

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

The weather it burned in

15°high
40km/h · peak gust
50%lowest humidity

It had gone 10 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 16.2 mm on 19 Oct.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

What happened to each town

  1. Ardãos e Bobadela 463 inhabitants · 2.8 km from the centre where it started
    76 ha reached on 13 Oct
    2.0 %
  2. Vilar de Perdizes e Meixide 463 inhabitants · 2.0 km from the centre
    65 ha
    1.8 %
  3. Sarraquinhos 300 inhabitants · 4.3 km from the centre
    3 ha
    0.1 %

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 land94 %
  • Agricultural areas5.5 %

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

Official record

According to ICNF, this fire started on 12 October 2020 and burned 136 ha (the satellite measured 144 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)
13 Oct 15.4 °C 50 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
14 Oct after 11.8 °C 52 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
15 Oct after 12.8 °C 44 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Low 9
16 Oct after 13.4 °C 38 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Low 8
17 Oct after 14.5 °C 57 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Low 7
18 Oct after 17.1 °C 37 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Low 9
19 Oct after 15.4 °C 41 % 78 km/h 16.2 mm Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 6 Oct 2020
After · 20 Oct 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 16 October 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
PM1012 µg/m³
111213141516
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 · 3Every 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 timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Portugal ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Montalegre fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 13 October 2020 and 13 October 2020: 1 day between the first and last image with fire. According to ICNF, it was detected on 12 October 2020 at 17:36 and declared extinguished on 13 October 2020.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 144 hectares (1.4 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: Ardãos e Bobadela (76 ha, 2.0 %); Vilar de Perdizes e Meixide (65 ha, 1.8 %); Sarraquinhos (3 ha, 0.1 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire came within 2.0 km of the centre of Vilar de Perdizes e Meixide, the closest of the areas it touched. 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 15.4 °C, humidity dropped to 50 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 10, class Low.
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. 3 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • Compared with ICNF: 136 official ha against 144 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.