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Sabugal fire, July 2022 Bendada

Out · last measured on 27 Jul 2022

The fire started on 26 July 2022 in Bendada, Portugal, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 262 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality. According to ICNF, it was detected on 26 July 2022 at 16:50 and declared extinguished on 27 July 2022.

It is the 11th largest in Sabugal since 2016 (of 11 with a page). Number 51 in Portugal in 2022, of 107.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Sabugal · 2016Sabugal · 2019Sabugal · 2025Serra da Estrela · 2022

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
262ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
2days
26 Jul 2022 – 27 Jul 2022
Municipalities hit
1
freguesias
Started on
26 Jul
2022
Danger at start
40
Very high · FWI index

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

31°high
38km/h · peak gust
25%lowest humidity

It had gone 20 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

84% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 218 ha in 2016, 2 ha in 2019.

What happened to each town

  1. Bendada 473 inhabitants · fire reached the centre where it started
    262 ha
    7.6 %

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 land76 %
  • Scrub and transitional woodland15 %
  • Agricultural areas9.1 %

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

Official record

According to ICNF, this fire started on 26 July 2022 and burned 262 ha (the satellite measured 262 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)
26 Jul 30.8 °C 31 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
27 Jul 31.4 °C 25 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
28 Jul after 29.9 °C 37 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
29 Jul after 32.1 °C 28 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
30 Jul after 35.3 °C 24 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
31 Jul after 36.0 °C 23 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
1 Aug after 37.6 °C 21 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
2 Aug after 35.6 °C 17 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
3 Aug after 34.0 °C 21 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
4 Aug after 32.9 °C 22 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
5 Aug after 32.7 °C 22 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
6 Aug after 32.9 °C 21 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 19 Jul 2022
After · 3 Aug 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 24 July 2022 the air beside the fire reached 11 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak11 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1017 µg/m³
24252627282930
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)

Other fires nearby

All fires in Portugal ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Sabugal fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 26 July 2022 and 27 July 2022: 2 days between the first and last image with fire. According to ICNF, it was detected on 26 July 2022 at 16:50 and declared extinguished on 27 July 2022.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 262 hectares (2.6 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Bendada (262 ha, 7.6 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Bendada 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 31.4 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 38 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.

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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. No Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • Compared with ICNF: 262 official ha against 262 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.