The fire started on 19 February 2021 in Vega de Pas, Spain, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 745 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality. According to EGIF (MITECO), the largest of the 14 recorded fires was detected on 19 February 2021 at 09:30 and declared extinguished on 20 February 2021.
It is the 8th largest in Cantabria since 2016 (of 179 with a page). Number 16 in Spain in 2021, of 120.
The power measured by the satellite is low (0.9 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
Perimeter published by EFFIS (Copernicus).
EGIF (MITECO): 734 ha (matched records: 14). Difference between the page and the official record: +1.5%. Matched on 8 November 2026.
19 Feb 2021 to 21 Feb 2021: first and last day with fire on the page.
EGIF (MITECO) declared the fire extinguished on 20 February 2021. Satellites may still see smouldering spots afterwards.
Alert according to EGIF (MITECO): 19 February 2021 at 09:30. Official cause: arson.
First day with fire on the page (satellite or perimeter): 19 February 2021.
VIIRS detections at 375 m. Most intense hotspot: 1 MW.
There is no official record to compare with. Each hotspot is a pixel detected in one satellite pass, not a separate fire.
Total radiative power on 19 February 2021; hotspots that day: 1.
Fire radiative power (FRP) measures the energy the fire gives off when the satellite passes. Added up by day, it compares intensity, not area.
Fire Weather Index (Canadian system) computed by WorldFires for the day the fire started. Consecutive days without rain before: 0.
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
High of 15.6 °C and minimum humidity of 31% on 20 February 2021; gusts of 83 km/h on 20 February 2021.
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.
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.
Every night a snapshot of what the page shows is saved. If anything changes, it appears in the list as a log entry.
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.
| 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021-02-19 | 1 | 1 | 13.9 | 7.3 | 39 | 27.9 | 67.7 | 0 | 1 | muy_bajo | 1 |
| 2021-02-20 | 0 | 0 | 15.6 | 11.6 | 31 | 31.3 | 82.8 | 0 | 4.7 | muy_bajo | 1 |
| 2021-02-21 | 0 | 0 | 13.7 | 3 | 41 | 15.7 | 46.4 | 10.6 | 4.8 | muy_bajo | 1 |
| 2021-02-22 | 0 | 0 | 7.9 | 2.6 | 62 | 16.4 | 42.1 | 14.7 | 0 | 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.
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). Open-Meteo.com · How we build fire pages: methodology
19 Feb 2021 · 1 MW · 1
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 14.7 mm on 22 Feb.
83% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 51 ha in 2017, 29 ha in 2018, 551 ha in 2019, 106 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 617 ha that had burned before.
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
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 protected area affected: 0 %
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.
According to EGIF (MITECO), 14 fires started inside this perimeter on these dates, totalling 734 ha (the satellite measured 745 ha).
EGIF (MITECO) 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 75 ha 2 16 ha 3 18 ha 4 64 ha 5 184 ha 6 37 ha 7 259 ha 8 10 ha 9 9 ha 10 8 ha 11 7 ha 12 6 ha 13 5 ha 14 36 haTotal according to EGIF (MITECO): 734 ha, 98 % of the 745 ha in the satellite perimeter.
MITECO, Estadística General de Incendios Forestales (EGIF). This is the agency’s consolidated statistic: it measures the area in its own way, which is why it can differ from the satellite.
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)
Started with Strong wind: 22 % of the area in Spain
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 19 Feb | 13.9 °C | 39 % | 68 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 1 |
| 20 Feb | 15.6 °C | 31 % | 83 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 5 |
| 21 Feb | 13.7 °C | 41 % | 46 km/h | 10.6 mm | Very low 5 |
| 22 Feb after | 7.9 °C | 62 % | 42 km/h | 14.7 mm | Very low 0 |
It started with an FWI of 1.0, a minimum humidity of 39% and rain the day before. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 62.
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 5.2 mm on 1 Apr.
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 3.0 mm on 21 Feb.
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 7.6 mm on 11 Apr.
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 4.5 mm on 1 Mar.
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 26.7 mm on 2 Mar.
It was 4.0 times larger than the median of its twins and lasted 3 days, against 3 days.
Only 5 of its 62 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. All of them had rain in the ten days after the end: the first rainy day brought a median of 6.0 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
It was considered over on 21 Feb, and on 22 Feb 14.7 mm fell. We do not know whether the rain or the firefighters put it out. Twins with rain when they ended: 62 of 62, with a median of 6.0 mm.
Weather on this page: Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.
On 21 February 2021 the air beside the fire reached 41 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 23: 1.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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)
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
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
No changes since 24 October 2026.
RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version
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.
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.