How long did the Pessegueiro do Vouga fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 9 August 2016 to 13 August 2016 (5 days). The perimeter dates it from 9 August 2016 to 12 August 2016. According to ICNF, the largest of the 2 recorded fires was detected on 9 August 2016 at 18:58 and declared extinguished on 13 August 2016.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,920 hectares (19.2 km²). Official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 5 municipalities: Macinhata do Vouga (1,325 ha, 41 %); Talhadas (346 ha, 12 %); União das Freguesias de Cedrim e Paradela (117 ha, 6.4 %); Pessegueiro do Vouga (79 ha, 5.0 %); Valongo do Vouga (55 ha, 1.3 %).

Did the fire reach a town?

The fire came within 1.1 km of the centre of Talhadas, 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 24 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, 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.

PT · Portugal · 2016-08-09 → 2016-08-13

Pessegueiro do Vouga fire, August 2016 Macinhata do Vouga, Talhadas, União das Freguesias de Cedrim e Paradela

Out · last detection 13 Aug 2016, 13:23 UTC

The fire started on 9 August 2016 in Pessegueiro do Vouga, Portugal, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 1,920 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 5 municipalities. According to ICNF, the largest of the 2 recorded fires was detected on 9 August 2016 at 18:58 and declared extinguished on 13 August 2016.

Number 15 in Portugal in 2016, of 180.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Pessegueiro do Vouga · 2024 Vouzela · 2026 Arouca · 2016 Vouzela · 2017

Burnt area: 1,920ha; Copernicus perimeter
Duration: 5days; 9 Aug 2016 – 13 Aug 2016
Municipalities hit: 5; freguesias
Started on: 9 Aug; 2016
Heat detections: 169; in a single hotspot: 92 MW
Danger at start: 40; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 666MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 9 Aug13 Aug

Play back 13 Aug 2016

How it evolved, day by day

9 Aug 10 Aug 11 Aug 12 Aug 13 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

50km/h · peak gust

24%lowest humidity

It had gone 32 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 1.2% of the area of London (19 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

Macinhata do Vouga 3,210 inhabitants · 1.2 km from the centre

1,325 ha reached on 10 Aug

41 %
Talhadas 1,126 inhabitants · 1.1 km from the centre

346 ha reached on 13 Aug

12 %
União das Freguesias de Cedrim e Paradela 720 inhabitants · 1.5 km from the centre

117 ha reached on 12 Aug

6.4 %
Pessegueiro do Vouga 1,715 inhabitants · 2.2 km from the centre where it started

79 ha reached on 9 Aug

5.0 %
Valongo do Vouga 4,637 inhabitants · 2.3 km from the centre

55 ha reached on 11 Aug

1.3 %

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

Scrub and transitional woodland92 %
Agricultural areas4.1 %
Artificial surfaces1.6 %
Coniferous forest1.6 %
Broadleaved forest0.7 %

Natura 2000 protected area affected: 31 %

LIC Rio Vouga PTCON0026

Natura 2000 sites (European Environment Agency, 2024 release) crossed by the perimeter.

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

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2015

Built-up area8.5 ha

Residents≈ 300

Inside the perimeter there were about 8.5 hectares of built-up land and about 300 residents (GHSL 2015, 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.

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

Complex of 2 fires according to ICNF

According to ICNF, 2 fires started inside this perimeter on these dates, totalling 1,859 ha (the satellite measured 1,920 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.

When each one burned

1 1,798 ha 2 61 ha

9 Aug13 Aug

rekindling cause unknown or not published

1 Sever do Vouga Pessegueiro do Vouga 9 August 2016 · 18:58 1,798 ha · extinguished on 13 August 2016 · cause: rekindling
2 Sever do Vouga Talhadas 10 August 2016 · 00:23 61 ha · extinguished on 10 August 2016 · cause: unknown

Total according to ICNF: 1,859 ha, 97 % of the 1,920 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)
9 Aug	30.6 °C	38 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
10 Aug	31.4 °C	27 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
11 Aug	32.2 °C	27 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
12 Aug	33.2 °C	24 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
13 Aug	31.7 °C	25 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
14 Aug after	27.0 °C	45 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
15 Aug after	25.9 °C	48 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
16 Aug after	24.3 °C	51 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
17 Aug after	23.4 °C	69 %	37 km/h	0.4 mm	Moderate 18
18 Aug after	25.6 °C	42 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
19 Aug after	23.0 °C	72 %	33 km/h	0.5 mm	Moderate 16
20 Aug after	24.5 °C	43 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
21 Aug after	31.4 °C	28 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
22 Aug after	34.1 °C	25 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
23 Aug after	30.4 °C	42 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 2 Aug 2016

After · 20 Aug 2016

Before After

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

Detections table · 169Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

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Frequently asked questions

How long did the Pessegueiro do Vouga fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 9 August 2016 to 13 August 2016 (5 days). The perimeter dates it from 9 August 2016 to 12 August 2016. According to ICNF, the largest of the 2 recorded fires was detected on 9 August 2016 at 18:58 and declared extinguished on 13 August 2016.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,920 hectares (19.2 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 5 municipalities: Macinhata do Vouga (1,325 ha, 41 %); Talhadas (346 ha, 12 %); União das Freguesias de Cedrim e Paradela (117 ha, 6.4 %); Pessegueiro do Vouga (79 ha, 5.0 %); Valongo do Vouga (55 ha, 1.3 %).
Did the fire reach a town?: The fire came within 1.1 km of the centre of Talhadas, 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 24 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
EFFIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

25 October 2026 Last day with fire: 12 August 2016 → 13 August 2016.

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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What really happened?

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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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 9 August 2016 to 12 August 2016. 169 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
Compared with ICNF: 1,859 official ha against 1,920 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 2015, 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.

Where it burned