Montalegre fire, 15 September 2025 Santo André, Gralhas, Meixedo e Padornelos
The fire started on 15 September 2025 in Santo André, Portugal, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 1,269 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 3 municipalities. According to ICNF, the largest of the 4 recorded fires was detected on 20 September 2025 at 01:20 and declared extinguished on 20 September 2025.
It is the largest fire in Montalegre since 2016 (of 65 with a page). Number 22 in Portugal in 2025, of 85.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 1,269ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 8days
- 15 Sept 2025 – 22 Sept 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 3
- freguesias
- Started on
- 15 Sept
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 30
- in a single hotspot: 54 MW
- Danger at start
- 22
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 81MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 7 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.2 mm on 27 Sept.
This area had burned before
78% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 638 ha in 2016, 12 ha in 2017, 1 ha in 2019, 21 ha in 2021, 421 ha in 2022, 19 ha in 2023, 7 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 993 ha that had burned before.
- 638 ha Montalegre fire, September 2016 979 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 279 ha Gralhas fire, January 2022 570 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 128 ha Santo André fire, January 2022 128 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1 ha Montalegre fire, March 2019 103 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1 ha Gralhas fire, February 2023 114 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Lisbon boundary: geoBoundaries · geoBoundaries, DG Territory (CC0 1.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
763 ha reached on 21 Sept40 %
-
Gralhas 186 inhabitants · 0.8 km from the centre500 ha reached on 16 Sept23 %
-
Meixedo e Padornelos 265 inhabitants · 2.5 km from the centre6 ha reached on 16 Sept0.2 %
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 land82 %
- Agricultural areas17 %
- Scrub and transitional woodland1.6 %
Land cover inside the perimeter according to Corine Land Cover, as reported by Copernicus.
Complex of 4 fires according to ICNF
According to ICNF, 4 fires started inside this perimeter on these dates, totalling 1,247 ha (the satellite measured 1,269 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.
- 1 Montalegre Santo André 14 September 2025 · 18:01 10 ha · extinguished on 14 September 2025 · cause: negligence
- 2 Montalegre Padornelos 16 September 2025 · 13:58 8 ha · extinguished on 16 September 2025 · cause: negligence
- 3 Montalegre Gralhas 20 September 2025 · 01:20 1,101 ha · extinguished on 20 September 2025 · cause: negligence
- 4 Montalegre Santo André 22 September 2025 · 12:42 129 ha · extinguished on 24 September 2025 · cause: rekindling
Total according to ICNF: 1,247 ha, 98 % of the 1,269 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 15 Sept | 22.4 °C | 50 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 16 Sept | 26.4 °C | 24 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 17 Sept | 28.5 °C | 20 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 18 Sept | 29.1 °C | 15 % | 33 km/h | 0.5 mm | High 37 |
| 19 Sept | 27.3 °C | 26 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 20 Sept | 18.6 °C | 58 % | 41 km/h | 15.0 mm | Very low 1 |
| 21 Sept | 12.8 °C | 46 % | 53 km/h | 0.1 mm | Low 6 |
| 22 Sept | 13.1 °C | 43 % | 56 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 10 |
| 23 Sept after | 16.9 °C | 35 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 24 Sept after | 17.1 °C | 34 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 14 |
| 25 Sept after | 19.9 °C | 34 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 15 |
| 26 Sept after | 20.7 °C | 30 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 27 Sept after | 15.0 °C | 36 % | 55 km/h | 4.2 mm | Very low 5 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · CopernicusOn 23 September 2025 the air beside the fire reached 52 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).
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 · 30Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Montalegre fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 15 September 2025 to 22 September 2025 (8 days). The perimeter dates it from 15 September 2025 to 20 September 2025. According to ICNF, the largest of the 4 recorded fires was detected on 20 September 2025 at 01:20 and declared extinguished on 20 September 2025.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,269 hectares (12.7 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 3 municipalities: Santo André (763 ha, 40 %); Gralhas (500 ha, 23 %); Meixedo e Padornelos (6 ha, 0.2 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire started in Santo André 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 29.1 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 39, 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 ›
- ICNF · Instituto da Conservação da Natureza e das Florestas ↗
- ANEPC · Proteção Civil ↗
- Fogos.pt (ocorrências em tempo real) ↗
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.
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
How we know this
- Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 15 September 2025 to 20 September 2025. 30 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- Compared with ICNF: 1,247 official ha against 1,269 ha of perimeter; they agree within 25%.
- Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.
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.