The fire started on 28 March 2023 in Tineo, Spain, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 9,722 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities. According to EGIF (MITECO), it was detected on 27 March 2023 at 23:45 and declared extinguished on 11 April 2023.
It is the largest fire in Asturias since 2016 (of 225 with a page). Number 3 in Spain in 2023, of 124.
This is an index computed from weather model data, not a measurement of the fire nor an official warning. Danger warnings are issued by each country’s authority. Emergency number and official warnings ›
Weather during the fire
model
21.4°C · 34% RH
High of 21.4 °C and minimum humidity of 34% on 29 March 2023; gusts of 74 km/h on 30 March 2023.
These are model values for a cell of about 25 km, not from a weather station: they may differ from what was measured on the ground.
Living inside
model
≈ 300people
Estimated residents inside the perimeter and 6.1 ha of built-up area (100 m grid, epoch 2025).
Source
GHSL R2023A · JRC
Date
calculated on 24 October 2026
+− cross-check
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.
ⓘThis page’s change log has been kept since 24 October 2026: every night what it publishes is compared and the difference is logged. Anything earlier is reconstructed from each source’s date and marked as reconstructed.
Show
· reconstructedofficial
Matched with the official EGIF (MITECO) record
Matches: 10,080 ha in the official record (records: 1).
· reconstructedGHSL
Population and built-up area computed
· reconstructedweather
Weather and FWI computed from the ERA5 reanalysis
· reconstructedpress
Cross-check with press and agencies published
112 Asturias (Emergencias, Principado) · Caleyando por Valdés (blog local)
A version keeps the area, dates, name and official record; the area as it was logged (changes under 2% are not logged). The map, hotspots and weather always show today’s data.
Citation
A lede of about 60 words figures only, no adjectives
CSV for this fire tineo-2023-03-5.csv · daily, no individual hotspots
fecha
focos_viirs
frp_mw
tmax_c
tmin_c
hr_min_pct
viento_max_kmh
racha_max_kmh
precip_mm
fwi
clase_fwi
dentro_del_incendio
2023-03-28
2
3
19.3
8.7
46
11.9
26.3
0
2.9
muy_bajo
1
2023-03-29
0
0
21.4
13.9
34
20.4
49.7
0
7.1
bajo
1
2023-03-30
56
367
18.1
12.6
45
32.8
74.5
0
11
bajo
1
2023-03-31
228
2,375
15.8
11.9
52
33.4
71.3
0.1
10.1
bajo
1
2023-04-01
0
0
11.8
8.9
68
25
57.6
3.7
0.5
muy_bajo
0
It is generated in your browser from this page’s data: one file per fire, aggregated by day and without individual hotspots.
Live widget for your story
It updates itself while the fire is still active and links to this page. Free, with the attribution shown at the bottom.
Sources for this page: EFFIS (Copernicus), NASA FIRMS (VIIRS), EGIF (MITECO), ERA5 (ECMWF/Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0), GHSL (JRC). Open-Meteo.com · How we build fire pages: methodology
Burnt area
9,722ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
4days
28 Mar 2023 – 31 Mar 2023
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
28 Mar
2023
Heat detections
286
in a single hotspot: 60 MW
Danger at start
3
Very low · FWI index
Average daily power
915MW
detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
HOTSPOTS BY DAY
28 Mar31 Mar
Play back31 Mar 2023
How it evolved, day by day
28 Mar30 Mar31 Mar
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
21°high
74km/h · peak gust
34%lowest humidity
It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.7 mm on 1 Apr.
This area had burned before
1% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 31 ha in 2018, 58 ha in 2020, 8 ha in 2021, 18 ha in 2022.
It burned the equivalent of 6.1% of the area of London (97 km² against 1,583 km²).
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
It burned the equivalent of 16% of the area of Madrid (97 km² against 604 km²).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
It burned almost the same area as Paris (97 km² against 105 km²).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
It burned the equivalent of 11% of the area of Berlin (97 km² against 892 km²).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
Fire perimeterLondon
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
Valdés10,776 inhabitants · fire reached the centre
8,312 hareached on 30 Mar
23 %
Tineo8,679 inhabitants · 10.8 km from the centrewhere it started
1,419 hareached on 28 Mar
2.6 %
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.
Natura 2000 sites (European Environment Agency, 2024 release) crossed by the perimeter.
Land cover inside the perimeter according to Corine Land Cover, as reported by Copernicus.
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2025
Built-up area6.1ha
Residents≈ 300
Inside the perimeter there were about 6.1 hectares of built-up land and about 300 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.
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)
28 Mar
19.3 °C
46 %
26 km/h
0.0 mm
Very low 3
29 Mar
21.4 °C
34 %
50 km/h
0.0 mm
Low 7
30 Mar
18.1 °C
45 %
74 km/h
0.0 mm
Low 11
31 Mar
15.8 °C
52 %
71 km/h
0.1 mm
Low 10
1 Apr after
11.8 °C
68 %
58 km/h
3.7 mm
Very low 0
Its twins: fires that started in the same weather
It started with an FWI of 2.9, a minimum humidity of 46% and 1 day without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 19.
FWI at the start2.9
Minimum humidity46 %
Days without rain1
this firechosen twinsrest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar
Outlines of the closest twins
This fire · Tineo fire, 28 March 2023
9,722 ha4 daysFWI 2.9Min. humidity 46 %
Cangas del Narcea fire, April 2017
324 ha8 daysFWI 2.0Min. humidity 46 %42 km away, in 2017
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
It was 70.4 times larger than the median of its twins and lasted 4 days, against 1 day.
None of its 19 twins burned more. The weather on the first day does not explain everything: the wind in the following days, the fuel and the firefighting also count. In 2 of 19, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 5.0 mm.
This is a bank of analogues: it shows what usually happens, not what will happen. With fewer than 15 twins we give no figures. How we calculate it
How it ended
3.7 mmfirst rain
1 Aprthe day after it ended
74km/h · max. gust
It was considered over on 31 Mar, and on 1 Apr 3.7 mm fell. We do not know whether the rain or the firefighters put it out. Twins with rain when they ended: 17 of 19, with a median of 5.0 mm.
Weather on this page: Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)
How a twin is chosen
Same area: fires that have already ended, less than 250 km from this one, since 2016.
Same start: we compare the FWI on the first day, the minimum humidity that day and the run of days without rain before it. The slider sets how much they may differ.
Only pages with final weather data (ERA5 reanalysis) calculated in the same way as this fire’s; agricultural and grass burns and pages with data under review are left out.
Fires burning at the same time as this one (a week before or after) are left out: they share the same spell of weather and do not count as a precedent.
They are sorted by similarity, and the outlines of the first five are drawn.
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
↔
Before · 21 Mar 2023
After · 7 Apr 2023
Sentinel-2 did not pass over on that day. Try another date, or use false colour, which is daily.
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 31 March 2023 the air beside the fire reached 107 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 33: 2.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
PM2.5 peak107µg/m³
Days over the guideline3days
PM10191µg/m³
Optical depth0.58
WHO 15
26 Mar28 Mar30 Mar1 Apr3 Apr
GoodFairModeratePoorVery poorExtremely 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· 286Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.›
⬇ Download CSVTimes in UTC. Each detection is a 375 m pixel: a large fire yields hundreds per pass.
Copernicus dates it between 28 March 2023 and 31 March 2023: 4 days between the first and last image with fire. According to EGIF (MITECO), it was detected on 27 March 2023 at 23:45 and declared extinguished on 11 April 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 9,722 hectares (97.2 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Valdés (8,312 ha, 23 %); Tineo (1,419 ha, 2.6 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire reached the centre of Valdés: 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 21.4 °C, humidity dropped to 34 % and gusts hit 74 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 11, class Low.
Where does this data come from?
From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Spain (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.
How did the fires that started in similar weather in this area end?
Fires less than 250 km away that started since 2016 with a similar FWI, humidity and dry spell: 19. Their median duration was 1 day and their median area 138 ha; 5 % went past 1,000 ha. None of its 19 twins burned more. The weather on the first day does not explain everything: the wind in the following days, the fuel and the firefighting also count. In 2 of 19, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 5.0 mm.
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.
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 errorHow we know this›
Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 286 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
Compared with EGIF (MITECO): 10,080 official ha against 9,722 ha of perimeter; they agree within 25%.
Checked against news and agencies: 2 confirmed sources.
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.
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 (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)). 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.