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Sabrosa fire, July 2025 Souto Maior, Sabrosa, São Lourenço de Ribapinhão

Out · last detection 19 Jul 2025, 02:39 UTC

The fire started on 16 July 2025 in Souto Maior, Portugal, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 462 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 4 municipalities. According to ICNF, it was detected on 16 July 2025 at 13:19 and declared extinguished on 18 July 2025.

Number 41 in Portugal in 2025, of 85.

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Burnt area
462ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
4days
16 Jul 2025 – 19 Jul 2025
Municipalities hit
4
freguesias
Started on
16 Jul
2025
Heat detections
27
in a single hotspot: 289 MW
Danger at start
34
High · FWI index
Average daily power
385MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 16 Jul19 Jul
19 Jul 2025

How it evolved, day by day

16 Jul 2025 · 1,452 MW · 8 17 Jul 2025 · 70 MW · 17 18 Jul 2025 · 19 MW · 1 19 Jul 2025 · 1 MW · 1
16 Jul 17 Jul 18 Jul 19 Jul

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

The weather it burned in

34°high
40km/h · peak gust
27%lowest humidity

It had gone 12 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

2% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 7 ha in 2020.

What happened to each town

  1. Souto Maior 439 inhabitants · fire reached the centre where it started
    380 ha reached on 16 Jul
    41 %
  2. Sabrosa 1,130 inhabitants · 1.5 km from the centre
    47 ha reached on 17 Jul
    5.4 %
  3. São Lourenço de Ribapinhão 318 inhabitants · 0.9 km from the centre
    35 ha reached on 17 Jul
    2.9 %
  4. Sanfins do Douro 1,256 inhabitants · 4.3 km from the centre
    0 ha
    0.0 %

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

  • Scrub and transitional woodland36 %
  • Other natural land28 %
  • Agricultural areas26 %
  • Coniferous forest9.2 %
  • Broadleaved forest0.7 %

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 2025 and burned 447 ha (the satellite measured 462 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 Jul 33.7 °C 27 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
17 Jul 28.7 °C 39 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
18 Jul 25.5 °C 37 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
19 Jul 23.4 °C 46 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
20 Jul after 21.7 °C 46 % 45 km/h 0.4 mm High 27
21 Jul after 25.5 °C 37 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
22 Jul after 27.3 °C 44 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
23 Jul after 27.3 °C 29 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
24 Jul after 27.0 °C 27 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
25 Jul after 28.5 °C 24 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
26 Jul after 31.1 °C 26 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
27 Jul after 32.4 °C 25 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 36

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 9 Jul 2025
After · 26 Jul 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 19 July 2025 the air beside the fire reached 23 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak23 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1034 µg/m³
Optical depth0.23
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 · 27Every 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 Sabrosa fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 16 July 2025 to 19 July 2025 (4 days). The perimeter dates it from 16 July 2025 to 17 July 2025. According to ICNF, it was detected on 16 July 2025 at 13:19 and declared extinguished on 18 July 2025.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 462 hectares (4.6 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 4 municipalities: Souto Maior (380 ha, 41 %); Sabrosa (47 ha, 5.4 %); São Lourenço de Ribapinhão (35 ha, 2.9 %); Sanfins do Douro (0 ha, 0.0 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Souto Maior 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 33.7 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 34, 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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 16 July 2025 to 17 July 2025. 27 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • Compared with ICNF: 447 official ha against 462 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.