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Vinhais fire, 28 August 2025 Ervedosa, Vale das Fontes, Curopos e Vale de Janeiro

Out · last detection 29 Aug 2025, 14:34 UTC

The fire started on 28 August 2025 in Vale das Fontes, Portugal, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 3,405 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 6 municipalities. According to ICNF, it was detected on 28 August 2025 at 11:08 and declared extinguished on 30 August 2025.

It is the largest fire in Vinhais since 2016 (of 11 with a page). Number 11 in Portugal in 2025, of 85.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Vinhais · 2017Vinhais · 2024Valpaços · 2026Chaves · 2020

Burnt area
3,405ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
3days
28 Aug 2025 – 30 Aug 2025
Municipalities hit
6
freguesias
Started on
28 Aug
2025
Heat detections
12
in a single hotspot: 256 MW
Danger at start
38
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
540MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 28 Aug30 Aug
29 Aug 2025

How it evolved, day by day

28 Aug 2025 · 1,072 MW · 11 29 Aug 2025 · 7 MW · 1
28 Aug 29 Aug

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

The weather it burned in

27°high
51km/h · peak gust
32%lowest humidity

It had gone 53 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.7 mm on 7 Sept.

This area had burned before

3% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 88 ha in 2017, 34 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 107 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.2% of the area of London (34 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

  1. Ervedosa fire reached the centre
    1,988 ha
    65 %
  2. Vale das Fontes 262 inhabitants · 2.9 km from the centre where it started
    453 ha reached on 28 Aug
    25 %
  3. Curopos e Vale de Janeiro 245 inhabitants · 1.2 km from the centre
    418 ha reached on 28 Aug
    12 %
  4. Agrochão 220 inhabitants · 0.8 km from the centre
    285 ha
    16 %
  5. Penhas Juntas 260 inhabitants · 1.5 km from the centre
    166 ha reached on 29 Aug
    6.3 %
  6. Rebordelo 2.4 km from the centre
    98 ha reached on 28 Aug
    4.7 %

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 woodland44 %
  • Agricultural areas31 %
  • Other natural land17 %
  • Coniferous forest6.6 %

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

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2025
Built-up area0.97 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.97 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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

Official record

According to ICNF, this fire started on 28 August 2025 and burned 3,159 ha (the satellite measured 3,405 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)
28 Aug 23.2 °C 32 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
29 Aug 26.4 °C 40 % 51 km/h 0.3 mm Very high 39
30 Aug 27.1 °C 35 % 37 km/h 0.1 mm High 34
31 Aug after 22.5 °C 34 % 48 km/h 0.4 mm High 37
1 Sept after 22.5 °C 33 % 38 km/h 0.1 mm High 34
2 Sept after 24.8 °C 45 % 37 km/h 0.2 mm High 31
3 Sept after 23.4 °C 57 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
4 Sept after 24.4 °C 35 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
5 Sept after 29.2 °C 24 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
6 Sept after 31.7 °C 22 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
7 Sept after 23.0 °C 52 % 27 km/h 1.7 mm Low 10

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 21 Aug 2025
After · 6 Sept 2025

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 26 August 2025 the air beside the fire reached 15 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak15 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1021 µg/m³
Optical depth0.27
26272829303112
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 · 12Every 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 Vinhais fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 28 August 2025 and 30 August 2025: 3 days between the first and last image with fire. According to ICNF, it was detected on 28 August 2025 at 11:08 and declared extinguished on 30 August 2025.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 3,405 hectares (34.0 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 6 municipalities: Ervedosa (1,988 ha, 65 %); Vale das Fontes (453 ha, 25 %); Curopos e Vale de Janeiro (418 ha, 12 %); Agrochão (285 ha, 16 %); Penhas Juntas (166 ha, 6.3 %); Rebordelo (98 ha, 4.7 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire reached the centre of Ervedosa: 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 27.1 °C, humidity dropped to 32 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 39, 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

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

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.

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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.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 12 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • Compared with ICNF: 3,159 official ha against 3,405 ha of perimeter; they agree within 25%.
  • 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.