Rio de Mel fire, October 2017 Rio de Mel, União das freguesias de Torre do Terrenho, Sebadelhe da Serra e Terrenho, Reboleiro
The fire started on 17 October 2017 in Rio de Mel, Portugal, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 974 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 6 municipalities.
Number 55 in Portugal in 2017, of 210.
Compare with…
We have the Copernicus perimeter for this fire, but the VIIRS sensors did not capture it in enough detail: no day-by-day evolution, but the split by municipality is there.
- Burnt area
- 974ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 1day
- 17 Oct 2017 – 17 Oct 2017
- Municipalities hit
- 6
- freguesias
- Started on
- 17 Oct
- 2017
- Danger at start
- 2
- Very low · FWI index
Where it burned
The weather it burned in
It had gone 47 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 10.2 mm on 18 Oct.
This area had burned before
No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Lisbon boundary: geoBoundaries · geoBoundaries, DG Territory (CC0 1.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
434 ha19 %
-
368 ha13 %
-
Reboleiro 247 inhabitants · 0.7 km from the centre86 ha19 %
-
Castanheira 165 inhabitants · 1.6 km from the centre48 ha4.8 %
-
Arnas 187 inhabitants · 3.6 km from the centre38 ha1.8 %
-
Palhais 154 inhabitants · 1.0 km from the centre0 ha0.0 %
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
- Other natural land79 %
- Scrub and transitional woodland20 %
- Agricultural areas1.2 %
Land cover inside the perimeter according to Corine Land Cover, as reported by Copernicus.
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2015Inside the perimeter there were about 0.26 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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
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 Oct | 16.3 °C | 45 % | 42 km/h | 11.8 mm | Very low 2 |
| 18 Oct after | 12.9 °C | 57 % | 39 km/h | 10.2 mm | Very low 0 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.
Other fires nearby
- 4,809 haFornos de Algodres Aldeia NovaOctober 2017 · 2 days · 13 km away
- 9,523 haGuarda Alverca da Beira/Bouça CovaAugust 2025 · 3 days · 24 km away
- 78,447 haTrancoso Trancoso (São Pedro e Santa Maria) e Souto MaiorAugust 2025 · 11 days · 25 km away
- 8,554 haPenalva do Castelo Vila Cova do Covelo/MarecoSeptember 2024 · 5 days · 32 km away
- 4,268 haGuarda Lameiras14 October 2017 · 3 days · 36 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Rio de Mel fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 17 October 2017 and 17 October 2017: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 974 hectares (9.7 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 6 municipalities: Rio de Mel (434 ha, 19 %); União das freguesias de Torre do Terrenho, Sebadelhe da Serra e Terrenho (368 ha, 13 %); Reboleiro (86 ha, 19 %); Castanheira (48 ha, 4.8 %); Arnas (38 ha, 1.8 %); Palhais (0 ha, 0.0 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire came within 0.7 km of the centre of Reboleiro, 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 16.3 °C, humidity dropped to 45 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 2, class Very low.
- 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 ›
- ICNF · Instituto da Conservação da Natureza e das Florestas ↗
- ANEPC · Proteção Civil ↗
- Fogos.pt (ocorrências em tempo real) ↗
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.
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
How we know this
- Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. No Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- 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.
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.