Skip to content
worldfires
PT · Portugal · →

Murça fire, September 2025 Vila Verde, União das Freguesias de Carva e Vilares, Fiolhoso

Out · last detection 13 Sept 2025, 13:13 UTC

The fire started on 12 September 2025 in Vila Verde, Portugal, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 1,179 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 3 municipalities. According to ICNF, it was detected on 12 September 2025 at 14:27 and declared extinguished on 15 September 2025.

It is the 2th largest in Alijó since 2016 (of 13 with a page). Number 23 in Portugal in 2025, of 85.

Burnt area
1,179ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
3days
12 Sept 2025 – 14 Sept 2025
Municipalities hit
3
freguesias
Started on
12 Sept
2025
Heat detections
46
in a single hotspot: 38 MW
Danger at start
7
Low · FWI index
Energy released
566MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

13 Sept 2025
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 12 Sept14 Sept

How it evolved, day by day

1213

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

The weather it burned in

27°high
41km/h · peak gust
32%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.8 mm on 20 Sept.

This area had burned before

48% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 252 ha in 2018, 67 ha in 2019, 2 ha in 2020, 252 ha in 2022.

What happened to each town

  1. Vila Verde 0.5 km from the town where it started
    693 ha reached on 13 Sept
    16 %
  2. União das Freguesias de Carva e Vilares 432 inhabitants · 0.8 km from the town
    402 ha reached on 12 Sept
    14 %
  3. Fiolhoso 416 inhabitants · 0.4 km from the town
    85 ha reached on 13 Sept
    5.2 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the official perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

What burned

  • Other natural land86 %
  • Agricultural areas7.4 %
  • Scrub and transitional woodland6.8 %

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

Official record

According to ICNF, this fire started on 12 September 2025 and burned 1,174 ha (the satellite measured 1,179 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)
12 Sept 22.3 °C 50 % 36 km/h 2.0 mm Low 7
13 Sept 22.6 °C 32 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
14 Sept 26.6 °C 43 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
15 Sept after 26.3 °C 31 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
16 Sept after 27.4 °C 26 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
17 Sept after 30.1 °C 17 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
18 Sept after 31.5 °C 12 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
19 Sept after 29.2 °C 27 % 40 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 39
20 Sept after 23.1 °C 33 % 42 km/h 2.8 mm Low 10

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 5 Sept 2025
After · 21 Sept 2025

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 15 September 2025 the air beside the fire reached 63 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 28: 1.9 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak63 µg/m³
Days over the guideline1 day
PM1066 µg/m³
Optical depth0.24
1011121314151617
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 · 46Every 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 Murça fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 12 September 2025 and 14 September 2025: 3 days between the first and last image with fire. According to ICNF, it was detected on 12 September 2025 at 14:27 and declared extinguished on 15 September 2025.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,179 hectares (11.8 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: Vila Verde (693 ha, 16 %); União das Freguesias de Carva e Vilares (402 ha, 14 %); Fiolhoso (85 ha, 5.2 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The closest fire to a town centre came within 0.4 km of Fiolhoso. That is the distance to the perimeter or nearest hotspot; it does not mean it entered the houses.
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 26.6 °C, humidity dropped to 32 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 20, class Moderate.
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

Satellite cross-check

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.

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.