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Penafiel fire, July 2025 Rio Mau, Capela, União das Freguesias de Melres e Medas

Out · last detection 1 Aug 2025, 13:18 UTC

The fire started on 29 July 2025 in Sobreira, Portugal, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 1,705 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 6 municipalities. According to ICNF, it was detected on 29 July 2025 at 09:26 and declared extinguished on 1 August 2025.

It is the 2th largest in Paredes since 2016 (of 10 with a page). Number 19 in Portugal in 2025, of 85.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Penafiel · 2017Gondomar · 2016Penafiel · 2022Aguiar de Sousa · 2024

Burnt area
1,705ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
4days
29 Jul 2025 – 1 Aug 2025
Municipalities hit
6
freguesias
Started on
29 Jul
2025
Heat detections
98
in a single hotspot: 160 MW
Danger at start
41
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
509MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 29 Jul1 Aug
1 Aug 2025

How it evolved, day by day

29 Jul 2025 · 1,072 MW · 42 30 Jul 2025 · 648 MW · 36 31 Jul 2025 · 295 MW · 12 1 Aug 2025 · 22 MW · 8
29 Jul 30 Jul 31 Jul 1 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

35°high
44km/h · peak gust
22%lowest humidity

It had gone 8 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

46% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 194 ha in 2016, 527 ha in 2017, 58 ha in 2022, 20 ha in 2024.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.1% of the area of London (17 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. Rio Mau 1,340 inhabitants · fire reached the centre
    443 ha reached on 30 Jul
    71 %
  2. Capela 964 inhabitants · fire reached the centre
    375 ha reached on 29 Jul
    28 %
  3. União das Freguesias de Melres e Medas 5,295 inhabitants · fire reached the centre
    309 ha reached on 29 Jul
    11 %
  4. Sebolido 823 inhabitants · fire reached the centre
    223 ha reached on 1 Aug
    44 %
  5. Sobreira 4,124 inhabitants · 5.6 km from the centre where it started
    185 ha reached on 29 Jul
    8.4 %
  6. Canelas 0.5 km from the centre
    172 ha reached on 30 Jul
    15 %

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 woodland68 %
  • Other natural land31 %
  • Broadleaved forest0.6 %

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

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2025
Built-up area4.4 ha
Residents≈ 200

Inside the perimeter there were about 4.4 hectares of built-up land and about 200 residents (GHSL 2025, satellite-based estimate).

This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu

Official record

According to ICNF, this fire started on 29 July 2025 and burned 1,659 ha (the satellite measured 1,705 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)
29 Jul 33.2 °C 26 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
30 Jul 34.5 °C 22 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
31 Jul 35.4 °C 24 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
1 Aug 33.3 °C 32 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
2 Aug after 32.4 °C 34 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
3 Aug after 37.5 °C 21 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
4 Aug after 35.2 °C 29 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
5 Aug after 39.1 °C 19 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
6 Aug after 31.0 °C 44 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
7 Aug after 29.4 °C 50 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
8 Aug after 29.7 °C 47 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
9 Aug after 33.1 °C 36 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
10 Aug after 33.7 °C 36 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
11 Aug after 33.9 °C 29 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 31

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 22 Jul 2025
After · 8 Aug 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 1 August 2025 the air beside the fire reached 369 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 185: 12 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak369 µg/m³
Days over the guideline5 days
PM10609 µg/m³
Optical depth0.63
27282930311234
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 · 98Every 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 29 July 2025 and 1 August 2025: 4 days between the first and last image with fire. According to ICNF, it was detected on 29 July 2025 at 09:26 and declared extinguished on 1 August 2025.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,705 hectares (17.0 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 6 municipalities: Rio Mau (443 ha, 71 %); Capela (375 ha, 28 %); União das Freguesias de Melres e Medas (309 ha, 11 %); Sebolido (223 ha, 44 %); Sobreira (185 ha, 8.4 %); Canelas (172 ha, 15 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire reached the centre of Sebolido: 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 35.4 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 41, 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 ›

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
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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. 98 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • Compared with ICNF: 1,659 official ha against 1,705 ha of perimeter; they agree within 25%.
  • Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.
  • Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

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.