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Valverdejo fire, July 2024 Barchín del Hoyo, Valverdejo, Gabaldón

Out · last detection 31 Jul 2024, 01:16 UTC

The fire started on 30 July 2024 in Valverdejo, Spain, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 2,223 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 4 municipalities.

Number 4 in Spain in 2024, of 82.

Burnt area
2,223ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
2days
30 Jul 2024 – 31 Jul 2024
Municipalities hit
4
municipalities
Started on
30 Jul
2024
Heat detections
43
in a single hotspot: 114 MW
Danger at start
58
Extreme · FWI index
Energy released
1.3GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

31 Jul 2024
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 30 Jul31 Jul

How it evolved, day by day

3031

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

The weather it burned in

36°high
49km/h · peak gust
15%lowest humidity

It had gone 28 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

21% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 477 ha in 2019.

What happened to each town

  1. Barchín del Hoyo 104 inhabitants · 1.7 km from the town
    1,543 ha reached on 31 Jul
    24 %
  2. Valverdejo 86 inhabitants · 2.2 km from the town where it started
    434 ha reached on 30 Jul
    13 %
  3. Gabaldón 146 inhabitants · 5.1 km from the town
    222 ha reached on 30 Jul
    2.6 %
  4. Piqueras del Castillo 36 inhabitants · 3.4 km from the town
    27 ha
    0.6 %

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

  • Mixed forest46 %
  • Coniferous forest34 %
  • Agricultural areas13 %
  • Sclerophyllous scrub5.3 %
  • Scrub and transitional woodland2.6 %

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

Checked against the press

Checked on 30 September 2026

We checked this page against 4 sources published once the fire was out. This is what they add:

Also known as
incendio forestal de Valverdejo
Official area reported: 2,500 ha (the satellite measured 2,223 ha)
Declared extinguished: 6 August 2024

Sources

Official figures are measured differently from satellite ones and sometimes cover only part of the fire.

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 36.4 °C 15 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
31 Jul 36.4 °C 18 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
1 Aug after 36.8 °C 11 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
2 Aug after 32.3 °C 16 % 44 km/h 0.1 mm Extreme 57
3 Aug after 35.0 °C 22 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
4 Aug after 35.8 °C 20 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
5 Aug after 36.6 °C 16 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
6 Aug after 36.4 °C 16 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
7 Aug after 35.9 °C 19 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
8 Aug after 35.9 °C 18 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
9 Aug after 36.4 °C 17 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
10 Aug after 35.2 °C 18 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 23 Jul 2024
After · 7 Aug 2024

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 2 August 2024 the air beside the fire reached 16 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak16 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1036 µg/m³
Optical depth0.53
28293031123
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 · 43Every 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 Spain ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Valverdejo fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 30 July 2024 and 31 July 2024: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 2,223 hectares (22.2 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 4 municipalities: Barchín del Hoyo (1,543 ha, 24 %); Valverdejo (434 ha, 13 %); Gabaldón (222 ha, 2.6 %); Piqueras del Castillo (27 ha, 0.6 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The closest fire to a town centre came within 1.7 km of Barchín del Hoyo. 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 36.4 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 58, class Extreme.
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.

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
What do you think is wrong?

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 (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.