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Viseu fire, September 2025 Cota, Queiriga, Barreiros e Cepões

Out · last detection 23 Sept 2025, 02:02 UTC

The fire started on 19 September 2025 in Cota, Portugal, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 273 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 3 municipalities. According to ICNF, it was detected on 19 September 2025 at 11:56 and declared extinguished on 20 September 2025.

Number 52 in Portugal in 2025, of 85.

The power measured by the satellite is low (26.6 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

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Burnt area
273ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
5days
19 Sept 2025 – 23 Sept 2025
Municipalities hit
3
freguesias
Started on
19 Sept
2025
Heat detections
6
in a single hotspot: 27 MW
Danger at start
37
High · FWI index
Average daily power
64MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 19 Sept23 Sept
23 Sept 2025

How it evolved, day by day

19 Sept 2025 · 128 MW · 5 23 Sept 2025 · 1 MW · 1
19 Sept 23 Sept

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

The weather it burned in

30°high
43km/h · peak gust
31%lowest humidity

It had gone 11 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.6 mm on 27 Sept.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

What happened to each town

  1. Cota 796 inhabitants · 4.2 km from the centre where it started
    111 ha
    2.7 %
  2. Queiriga 523 inhabitants · 0.9 km from the centre
    95 ha reached on 23 Sept
    3.0 %
  3. Barreiros e Cepões 1,394 inhabitants · 3.8 km from the centre
    67 ha reached on 19 Sept
    1.9 %

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 woodland97 %
  • Agricultural areas2.6 %

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

Official record

According to ICNF, this fire started on 19 September 2025 and burned 277 ha (the satellite measured 273 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)
19 Sept 30.5 °C 31 % 38 km/h 0.2 mm High 37
20 Sept 23.9 °C 41 % 36 km/h 0.1 mm High 28
21 Sept 19.7 °C 35 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
22 Sept 19.9 °C 33 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
23 Sept 21.3 °C 30 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
24 Sept after 22.7 °C 27 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
25 Sept after 24.4 °C 22 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
26 Sept after 24.5 °C 25 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
27 Sept after 20.3 °C 30 % 52 km/h 2.6 mm Moderate 13

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 12 Sept 2025
After · 30 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 21 September 2025 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
PM1029 µg/m³
Optical depth0.63
171819202122232425
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 · 6Every 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 Viseu fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 19 September 2025 to 23 September 2025 (5 days). The perimeter dates it from 19 September 2025 to 22 September 2025. According to ICNF, it was detected on 19 September 2025 at 11:56 and declared extinguished on 20 September 2025.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 273 hectares (2.7 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: Cota (111 ha, 2.7 %); Queiriga (95 ha, 3.0 %); Barreiros e Cepões (67 ha, 1.9 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire came within 0.9 km of the centre of Queiriga, the closest of the areas it touched. That is the distance from the perimeter, or the nearest hotspot, to the point marking the centre; it does not mean it entered the houses.
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 30.5 °C, humidity dropped to 31 % and gusts hit 43 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 37, 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 · 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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 19 September 2025 to 22 September 2025. 6 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • Compared with ICNF: 277 official ha against 273 ha of perimeter; they agree within 25%.
  • Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.

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.