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Seia fire, July 2025 Santa Comba, União das Freguesias de Tourais e Lajes, Pinhanços

Out · last detection 30 Jul 2025, 13:55 UTC

The fire started on 30 July 2025 in Santa Comba, Portugal, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 235 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 3 municipalities. According to ICNF, it was detected on 30 July 2025 at 09:07 and declared extinguished on 30 July 2025.

Number 57 in Portugal in 2025, of 85.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Pombeiro da Beira · 2017Seia · 2017Nelas · 2024Serra da Estrela · 2022

Burnt area
235ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
1day
30 Jul 2025 – 30 Jul 2025
Municipalities hit
3
freguesias
Started on
30 Jul
2025
Heat detections
9
in a single hotspot: 31 MW
Danger at start
44
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
224MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 30 Jul30 Jul

How it evolved, day by day

30 Jul 2025 · 224 MW · 9

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
42km/h · peak gust
22%lowest humidity

It had gone 9 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

100% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 234 ha in 2017.

What happened to each town

  1. Santa Comba 725 inhabitants · fire reached the centre where it started
    176 ha reached on 30 Jul
    15 %
  2. União das Freguesias de Tourais e Lajes 1,529 inhabitants · 2.0 km from the centre
    35 ha
    1.4 %
  3. Pinhanços 727 inhabitants · 2.1 km from the centre
    23 ha
    2.8 %

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 woodland58 %
  • Agricultural areas33 %
  • Coniferous forest8.9 %

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

Official record

According to ICNF, this fire started on 30 July 2025 and burned 214 ha (the satellite measured 235 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)
30 Jul 33.5 °C 22 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
31 Jul after 34.0 °C 24 % 36 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 42
1 Aug after 32.8 °C 29 % 28 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 38
2 Aug after 34.3 °C 28 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
3 Aug after 36.8 °C 20 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
4 Aug after 36.3 °C 26 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
5 Aug after 38.2 °C 22 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
6 Aug after 34.0 °C 33 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
7 Aug after 34.4 °C 30 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
8 Aug after 32.9 °C 39 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
9 Aug after 35.6 °C 27 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 34

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 23 Jul 2025
After · 6 Aug 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 1 August 2025 the air beside the fire reached 34 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 15: 1.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak34 µg/m³
Days over the guideline1 day
PM1040 µg/m³
Optical depth0.79
2829303112
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 · 9Every 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 Seia fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 30 July 2025 and 30 July 2025: 1 day between the first and last image with fire. According to ICNF, it was detected on 30 July 2025 at 09:07 and declared extinguished on 30 July 2025.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 235 hectares (2.4 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: Santa Comba (176 ha, 15 %); União das Freguesias de Tourais e Lajes (35 ha, 1.4 %); Pinhanços (23 ha, 2.8 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Santa Comba 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 33.5 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, 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.

Report an error
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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. 9 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • Compared with ICNF: 214 official ha against 235 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.