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Monterrei fire, 24 July 2020 Monterrei, Cualedro

Out · last detection 27 Jul 2020, 02:24 UTC

The fire started on 24 July 2020 in Monterrei, Spain, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 729 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 32th largest in Ourense since 2016 (of 118 with a page). Number 13 in Spain in 2020, of 89.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Monterrei · 2017Monterrei · 2025Vilarelho Da Raia · 2025Laza · 2022

Burnt area
729ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
4days
24 Jul 2020 – 27 Jul 2020
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
24 Jul
2020
Heat detections
33
in a single hotspot: 36 MW
Danger at start
33
High · FWI index
Average daily power
155MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 24 Jul27 Jul
27 Jul 2020

How it evolved, day by day

25 Jul 2020 · 307 MW · 32 27 Jul 2020 · 2 MW · 1
25 Jul 27 Jul

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

The weather it burned in

32°high
41km/h · peak gust
30%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

7% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 50 ha in 2017.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 0.5% of the area of London (7.3 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

  1. Monterrei 2,403 inhabitants · 7.2 km from the centre where it started
    693 ha reached on 25 Jul
    5.8 %
  2. Cualedro 1,538 inhabitants · 4.7 km from the centre
    36 ha reached on 25 Jul
    0.3 %

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 land49 %
  • Agricultural areas34 %
  • Scrub and transitional woodland9.2 %
  • Broadleaved forest7.4 %

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

Official record

According to EGIF (MITECO), this fire started on 24 July 2020 and burned 420 ha (the satellite measured 729 ha). The two figures differ a lot, so these may not be exactly the same fire: take them as nearby records.

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)
24 Jul 28.6 °C 32 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
25 Jul 29.0 °C 34 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
26 Jul 31.7 °C 30 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
27 Jul 32.1 °C 32 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
28 Jul after 31.0 °C 36 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
29 Jul after 33.0 °C 27 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
30 Jul after 33.3 °C 29 % 31 km/h 0.3 mm High 35
31 Jul after 31.2 °C 24 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
1 Aug after 27.9 °C 41 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
2 Aug after 25.8 °C 34 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
3 Aug after 25.9 °C 43 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
4 Aug after 29.3 °C 32 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
5 Aug after 32.5 °C 26 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
6 Aug after 35.2 °C 21 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 17 Jul 2020
After · 3 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 22 July 2020 the air beside the fire reached 14 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak14 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1023 µg/m³
222324252627282930
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 · 33Every 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 Spain ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Monterrei fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 24 July 2020 and 27 July 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 729 hectares (7.3 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Monterrei (693 ha, 5.8 %); Cualedro (36 ha, 0.3 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire came within 4.7 km of the centre of Cualedro, 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 32.1 °C, humidity dropped to 30 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 35, class High.
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. 33 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • Compared with EGIF (MITECO): 420 official ha against 729 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.