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Valença fire, September 2019 Cerdal, Fontoura, Formariz e Ferreira

Out · last detection 5 Sept 2019, 14:00 UTC

The fire started on 5 September 2019 in Fontoura, Portugal, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 675 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 4 municipalities. According to ICNF, the largest of the 2 recorded fires was detected on 4 September 2019 at 21:19 and declared extinguished on 5 September 2019.

Number 8 in Portugal in 2019, of 52.

Burnt area
675ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
1day
5 Sept 2019 – 5 Sept 2019
Municipalities hit
4
freguesias
Started on
5 Sept
2019
Heat detections
35
in a single hotspot: 38 MW
Danger at start
22
High · FWI index
Energy released
442MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Sept5 Sept

How it evolved, day by day

5

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
58km/h · peak gust
36%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

5% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 35 ha in 2017.

What happened to each town

  1. Cerdal 1,550 inhabitants · 0.6 km from the town
    284 ha reached on 2 Sept
    15 %
  2. Fontoura 686 inhabitants · 1.0 km from the town
    238 ha reached on 5 Sept
    26 %
  3. Formariz e Ferreira 915 inhabitants · 2.5 km from the town where it started
    141 ha reached on 5 Sept
    7.3 %
  4. Cossourado e Linhares 509 inhabitants · 1.2 km from the town
    12 ha reached on 5 Sept
    1.3 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the official perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

What burned

  • Scrub and transitional woodland74 %
  • Broadleaved forest10 %
  • Other natural land8.2 %
  • Mixed forest4.5 %
  • Coniferous forest1.6 %
  • Agricultural areas1.2 %

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

Official record

According to ICNF, 2 fires started inside this perimeter on these dates, totalling 723 ha (the satellite measured 675 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)
5 Sept 26.5 °C 36 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
6 Sept after 25.5 °C 36 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
7 Sept after 26.6 °C 28 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
8 Sept after 26.3 °C 33 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
9 Sept after 20.9 °C 54 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
10 Sept after 19.5 °C 44 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
11 Sept after 24.0 °C 43 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
12 Sept after 27.2 °C 34 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
13 Sept after 30.4 °C 34 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
14 Sept after 27.7 °C 40 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
15 Sept after 26.3 °C 50 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 29 Aug 2019
After · 12 Sept 2019

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 August 2019 the air beside the fire reached 17 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak17 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1023 µg/m³
3112345678
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 · 35Every 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 Valença fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 5 September 2019 and 5 September 2019: 1 day between the first and last image with fire. According to ICNF, the largest of the 2 recorded fires was detected on 4 September 2019 at 21:19 and declared extinguished on 5 September 2019.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 675 hectares (6.8 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 4 municipalities: Cerdal (284 ha, 15 %); Fontoura (238 ha, 26 %); Formariz e Ferreira (141 ha, 7.3 %); Cossourado e Linhares (12 ha, 1.3 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The closest fire to a town centre came within 0.6 km of Cerdal. That is the distance to the perimeter or nearest hotspot; it does not mean it entered the houses.
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 26.5 °C, humidity dropped to 36 % and gusts hit 58 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 22, class 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

Satellite cross-check

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.

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.