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Penafiel fire, August 2024 Lagares e Figueira, Termas de São Vicente, Capela

Out · last detection 17 Aug 2024, 02:37 UTC

The fire started on 16 August 2024 in Lagares e Figueira, Portugal, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 309 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 3 municipalities. According to ICNF, it was detected on 16 August 2024 at 14:36 and declared extinguished on 17 August 2024.

Number 45 in Portugal in 2024, of 69.

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Burnt area
309ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
2days
16 Aug 2024 – 17 Aug 2024
Municipalities hit
3
freguesias
Started on
16 Aug
2024
Heat detections
20
in a single hotspot: 77 MW
Danger at start
29
High · FWI index
Average daily power
298MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 16 Aug17 Aug
17 Aug 2024

How it evolved, day by day

16 Aug 2024 · 560 MW · 9 17 Aug 2024 · 35 MW · 11
16 Aug 17 Aug

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

The weather it burned in

33°high
45km/h · peak gust
27%lowest humidity

It had gone 17 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

1% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4 ha in 2022.

What happened to each town

  1. Lagares e Figueira 2,780 inhabitants · 3.4 km from the centre where it started
    190 ha reached on 16 Aug
    12 %
  2. Termas de São Vicente 4,758 inhabitants · 1.6 km from the centre
    109 ha
    11 %
  3. Capela 964 inhabitants · 1.7 km from the centre
    10 ha reached on 17 Aug
    0.8 %

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

  • Scrub and transitional woodland55 %
  • Broadleaved forest26 %
  • Other natural land15 %
  • Agricultural areas3.3 %

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

Official record

According to ICNF, this fire started on 16 August 2024 and burned 308 ha (the satellite measured 309 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)
16 Aug 33.2 °C 27 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
17 Aug 28.9 °C 49 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
18 Aug after 27.1 °C 55 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 21
19 Aug after 27.9 °C 47 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
20 Aug after 28.5 °C 50 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
21 Aug after 30.5 °C 39 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
22 Aug after 24.3 °C 58 % 39 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 20
23 Aug after 27.5 °C 53 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
24 Aug after 24.9 °C 62 % 40 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 20
25 Aug after 28.4 °C 34 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
26 Aug after 29.4 °C 34 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
27 Aug after 24.9 °C 54 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 9 Aug 2024
After · 24 Aug 2024

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 20 August 2024 the air beside the fire reached 22 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak22 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1026 µg/m³
Optical depth0.16
14151617181920
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 · 20Every 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 Penafiel fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 16 August 2024 and 17 August 2024: 2 days between the first and last image with fire. According to ICNF, it was detected on 16 August 2024 at 14:36 and declared extinguished on 17 August 2024.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 309 hectares (3.1 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: Lagares e Figueira (190 ha, 12 %); Termas de São Vicente (109 ha, 11 %); Capela (10 ha, 0.8 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire came within 1.6 km of the centre of Termas de São Vicente, 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 33.2 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 29, 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. 20 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • Compared with ICNF: 308 official ha against 309 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.