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Pinhel fire, July 2022 Lameiras, Pinhel, Vascoveiro

Out · last detection 17 Jul 2022, 13:47 UTC

The fire started on 17 July 2022 in Lameiras, Portugal, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 358 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 4 municipalities. According to ICNF, it was detected on 16 July 2022 at 20:07 and declared extinguished on 16 July 2022.

It is the 7th largest in Pinhel since 2016 (of 11 with a page). Number 37 in Portugal in 2022, of 107.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Guarda · 2017Guarda · 2025Guarda · 2017Guarda · 2026

Burnt area
358ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
1day
17 Jul 2022 – 17 Jul 2022
Municipalities hit
4
freguesias
Started on
17 Jul
2022
Heat detections
24
in a single hotspot: 181 MW
Danger at start
59
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
716MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 17 Jul17 Jul

How it evolved, day by day

17 Jul 2022 · 716 MW · 24

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

The weather it burned in

37°high
45km/h · peak gust
21%lowest humidity

It had gone 11 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

5% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 19 ha in 2017.

What happened to each town

  1. Lameiras 200 inhabitants · fire reached the centre where it started
    197 ha reached on 17 Jul
    11 %
  2. Pinhel 3,293 inhabitants · 4.5 km from the centre
    98 ha reached on 17 Jul
    2.2 %
  3. Vascoveiro 156 inhabitants · 1.6 km from the centre
    61 ha reached on 17 Jul
    3.4 %
  4. Souro Pires 473 inhabitants · 1.6 km from the centre
    2 ha
    0.1 %

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

  • Agricultural areas42 %
  • Other natural land26 %
  • Scrub and transitional woodland25 %
  • Artificial surfaces6.7 %
  • Other land cover0.6 %

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

Official record

According to ICNF, this fire started on 16 July 2022 and burned 356 ha (the satellite measured 358 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)
17 Jul 37.2 °C 21 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
18 Jul after 32.4 °C 27 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
19 Jul after 27.8 °C 35 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
20 Jul after 33.5 °C 21 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
21 Jul after 35.3 °C 20 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
22 Jul after 33.8 °C 18 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
23 Jul after 34.9 °C 23 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
24 Jul after 33.3 °C 20 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
25 Jul after 31.8 °C 26 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
26 Jul after 30.9 °C 29 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
27 Jul after 31.5 °C 24 % 36 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 · 10 Jul 2022
After · 24 Jul 2022

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 July 2022 the air beside the fire reached 22 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 16: 1.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak22 µg/m³
Days over the guideline1 day
PM1038 µg/m³
151617181920
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 · 24Every 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 Pinhel fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 17 July 2022 and 17 July 2022: 1 day between the first and last image with fire. According to ICNF, it was detected on 16 July 2022 at 20:07 and declared extinguished on 16 July 2022.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 358 hectares (3.6 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 4 municipalities: Lameiras (197 ha, 11 %); Pinhel (98 ha, 2.2 %); Vascoveiro (61 ha, 3.4 %); Souro Pires (2 ha, 0.1 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Lameiras and reached its centre: 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 37.2 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 59, class Extreme.
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. 24 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • Compared with ICNF: 356 official ha against 358 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.