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Soalhães fire, 7 August 2016 Soalhães, Baião (Santa Leocádia) e Mesquinhata, Grilo

Out · last detection 10 Aug 2016, 14:19 UTC

The fire started on 7 August 2016 in Soalhães, Portugal, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 1,034 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 3 municipalities. According to ICNF, the largest of the 9 recorded fires was detected on 8 August 2016 at 05:10 and declared extinguished on 8 August 2016.

It is the 2th largest in Marco de Canaveses since 2016 (of 14 with a page). Number 33 in Portugal in 2016, of 179.

Compare with…

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Burnt area
1,034ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
5days
7 Aug 2016 – 11 Aug 2016
Municipalities hit
3
freguesias
Started on
7 Aug
2016
Heat detections
33
in a single hotspot: 72 MW
Danger at start
45
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
176MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 7 Aug11 Aug
10 Aug 2016

How it evolved, day by day

7 Aug 2016 · 170 MW · 8 8 Aug 2016 · 259 MW · 12 10 Aug 2016 · 100 MW · 13
7 Aug 8 Aug 10 Aug

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

The weather it burned in

35°high
62km/h · peak gust
17%lowest humidity

It had gone 31 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.2 mm on 17 Aug.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 0.7% of the area of London (10 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

  1. Soalhães 3,322 inhabitants · 0.6 km from the centre where it started
    816 ha reached on 7 Aug
    34 %
  2. Baião (Santa Leocádia) e Mesquinhata 731 inhabitants · 1.8 km from the centre
    116 ha
    13 %
  3. Grilo 472 inhabitants · fire reached the centre
    103 ha
    17 %

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 woodland41 %
  • Other natural land34 %
  • Agricultural areas23 %
  • Artificial surfaces1.4 %

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

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2015
Built-up area14 ha
Residents≈ 650

Inside the perimeter there were about 14 hectares of built-up land and about 650 residents (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

Official record

Complex of 9 fires according to ICNF

According to ICNF, 9 fires started inside this perimeter on these dates, totalling 868 ha (the satellite measured 1,034 ha).

ICNF records each fire that started at a different time or place separately; the satellite sees a single burned area, so this page groups them together. The numbers on the map show where each one started.

When each one burned

1 50 ha 2 170 ha 3 19 ha 4 300 ha 5 206 ha 6 10 ha 7 62 ha 8 5 ha 9 46 ha
7 Aug11 Aug
cause unknown or not published rekindling
  1. 1 Marco de Canaveses Soalhães 7 August 2016 · 10:12 50 ha · extinguished on 8 August 2016 · cause: unknown
  2. 2 Marco de Canaveses Soalhães 7 August 2016 · 18:34 170 ha · extinguished on 8 August 2016 · cause: unknown
  3. 3 Baião Gove 7 August 2016 · 21:40 19 ha · extinguished on 8 August 2016 · cause: unknown
  4. 4 Marco de Canaveses Soalhães 8 August 2016 · 05:10 300 ha · extinguished on 8 August 2016 · cause: unknown
  5. 5 Marco de Canaveses Soalhães 8 August 2016 · 05:59 206 ha · extinguished on 9 August 2016 · cause: rekindling
  6. 6 Marco de Canaveses Paredes de Viadores 9 August 2016 · 15:40 10 ha · extinguished on 9 August 2016 · cause: rekindling
  7. 7 Marco de Canaveses Soalhães 9 August 2016 · 22:44 62 ha · extinguished on 10 August 2016 · cause: unknown
  8. 8 Marco de Canaveses Soalhães 10 August 2016 · 06:04 5 ha · extinguished on 10 August 2016 · cause: rekindling
  9. 9 Marco de Canaveses Soalhães 10 August 2016 · 07:43 46 ha · extinguished on 10 August 2016 · cause: rekindling

Total according to ICNF: 868 ha, 84 % of the 1,034 ha in the satellite perimeter.

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)
7 Aug 34.7 °C 17 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
8 Aug 34.9 °C 21 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
9 Aug 31.3 °C 29 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
10 Aug 28.5 °C 20 % 62 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
11 Aug 29.6 °C 24 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
12 Aug after 31.1 °C 26 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
13 Aug after 31.0 °C 21 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
14 Aug after 29.8 °C 35 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
15 Aug after 27.5 °C 45 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
16 Aug after 24.2 °C 48 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
17 Aug after 22.6 °C 64 % 36 km/h 1.2 mm Low 10

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 31 Jul 2016
After · 18 Aug 2016

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 13 August 2016 the air beside the fire reached 55 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 40: 2.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak55 µg/m³
Days over the guideline7 days
PM1066 µg/m³
5678910111213
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 · 33Every 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 Soalhães fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 7 August 2016 to 11 August 2016 (5 days). The perimeter dates it from 7 August 2016 to 10 August 2016. According to ICNF, the largest of the 9 recorded fires was detected on 8 August 2016 at 05:10 and declared extinguished on 8 August 2016.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,034 hectares (10.3 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: Soalhães (816 ha, 34 %); Baião (Santa Leocádia) e Mesquinhata (116 ha, 13 %); Grilo (103 ha, 17 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire reached the centre of Grilo: 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 34.9 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 62 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 47, 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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 7 August 2016 to 10 August 2016. 33 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • Compared with ICNF: 868 official ha against 1,034 ha of perimeter; they agree within 25%.
  • 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.

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.