How long did the Soalhães fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 16 September 2024 to 18 September 2024 (3 days). The perimeter dates it from 17 September 2024 to 18 September 2024.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 609 hectares (6.1 km²). Official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 3 municipalities: Soalhães (431 ha, 18 %); Baião (Santa Leocádia) e Mesquinhata (90 ha, 10 %); Grilo (89 ha, 15 %).

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 25.7 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 59 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.

PT · Portugal · 2024-09-16 → 2024-09-18

Soalhães fire, September 2024 Soalhães, Baião (Santa Leocádia) e Mesquinhata, Grilo

Out · last detection 18 Sept 2024, 14:00 UTC

The fire started on 16 September 2024 in Soalhães, Portugal, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 609 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 5th largest in Marco de Canaveses since 2016 (of 14 with a page). Number 30 in Portugal in 2024, of 69.

The power measured by the satellite is low (13.6 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Soalhães · 2016 Soalhães · 2019 União das Freguesias de Campelo e Ovil e Loivos do Monte · 2024 Arouca · 2025

Burnt area: 609ha; Copernicus perimeter
Duration: 3days; 16 Sept 2024 – 18 Sept 2024
Municipalities hit: 3; freguesias
Started on: 16 Sept; 2024
Heat detections: 18; in a single hotspot: 14 MW
Danger at start: 44; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 70MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 16 Sept18 Sept

Play back 18 Sept 2024

How it evolved, day by day

17 Sept 18 Sept

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

The weather it burned in

26°high

59km/h · peak gust

26%lowest humidity

It had gone 9 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 8.0 mm on 20 Sept.

This area had burned before

85% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 517 ha in 2016, 104 ha in 2019, 4 ha in 2021, 5 ha in 2022, 7 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 517 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 0.4% of the area of London (6.1 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

Soalhães 3,322 inhabitants · 0.6 km from the centre where it started

431 ha reached on 17 Sept

18 %
Baião (Santa Leocádia) e Mesquinhata 731 inhabitants · 1.8 km from the centre

90 ha

10 %
Grilo 472 inhabitants · fire reached the centre

89 ha reached on 18 Sept

15 %

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 woodland49 %
Other natural land35 %
Agricultural areas15 %
Artificial surfaces0.8 %

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

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2025

Built-up area5.4 ha

Residents≈ 250

Inside the perimeter there were about 5.4 hectares of built-up land and about 250 residents (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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 Sept	25.7 °C	26 %	59 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
18 Sept	25.4 °C	36 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
19 Sept after	24.0 °C	54 %	29 km/h	0.1 mm	Moderate 21
20 Sept after	21.0 °C	67 %	26 km/h	8.0 mm	Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 9 Sept 2024

After · 25 Sept 2024

Before After

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 20 September 2024 the air beside the fire reached 306 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 160: 11 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak306 µg/m³

Days over the guideline4 days

PM10346 µg/m³

Optical depth4.89

WHO 15

15161718192021

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 · 18Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

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 16 September 2024 to 18 September 2024 (3 days). The perimeter dates it from 17 September 2024 to 18 September 2024.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 609 hectares (6.1 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 3 municipalities: Soalhães (431 ha, 18 %); Baião (Santa Leocádia) e Mesquinhata (90 ha, 10 %); Grilo (89 ha, 15 %).
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 25.7 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 59 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
EFFIS · Copernicus ↗

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

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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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How we know this

Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 17 September 2024 to 18 September 2024. 18 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 2025, 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.

Where it burned