Fire near Villafranca del Bierzo (ES)

42.71°N, 6.76°W · first detected on 29 July at 03:39

What the satellites measured

This fire was tracked from 29 July at 03:39 to 1 August at 16:25, that is 4 days, through 387 satellite detections. The detected extent reaches 3,050 ha.

Detected extent: 3,050 ha
Cumulative power: 9,856 MW
Peak power: 501 MW
Detections: 387

“Detected extent” is not “burned area”: it is the union of the ground footprints of the satellite pixels, and a 375 m pixel counts in full even when only a forest edge is burning. Compared with press figures it is in practice one and a half to three times the area reported. Detections taken at the edge of the scan swath, too coarse to measure anything at all, are excluded. These figures come from thermal satellite detection and are not an official assessment: only the local fire and civil protection authorities are authoritative.

Replay how the fire spread

The map is centred on this fire and loads only its detections. The timeline below covers the whole fire, from the first satellite pass to the last. “1 h” shows what is burning within an hour of the chosen moment : the map then follows the power curve below and empties when it falls. “12 h” stacks twelve hours , as the home map does, where stacking avoids an empty screen between two satellite passes. Both are true, but they say different things.

The detected extent

Outline of the burned area near Villafranca del Bierzo (ES), drawn over satellite imagery — The outline is the union of the ground footprints of every satellite detection of this fire, from the first pass to the last. The background is the EOX cloudless Sentinel-2 mosaic, 2024 vintage: it shows the landscape BEFORE these fires, not the burn scar.

The spread, pass after pass

Villafranca del Bierzo (ES) seen by Sentinel-2 on 27 July — One image per usable Sentinel-2 pass, on the same framing throughout so that the comparison means something. The satellite comes back every two to five days and clouds rule out some of the passes: the gaps in the series are days without an image, not days without fire.

Villafranca del Bierzo (ES) seen by Sentinel-2 on 29 July — One image per usable Sentinel-2 pass, on the same framing throughout so that the comparison means something. The satellite comes back every two to five days and clouds rule out some of the passes: the gaps in the series are days without an image, not days without fire.

How the radiative power evolved

One point per satellite pass: the sum of the fire radiative power measured over the fire. This is the curve that says whether the fire eased off or picked up again, which no cumulative figure shows. The window covers 30 days; beyond that, clustering would merge two successive fires in the same place.

Fire dynamics

Loading history…

Satellite passes in detail

Pass	Power	Detections	Sensor
14 August at 15:40	70 MW	1	Met10
14 August at 15:25	75 MW	1	Met10
14 August at 14:55	82 MW	1	Met10
13 August at 17:28	13 MW	1	Met12
13 August at 14:55	90 MW	1	Met10
13 August at 14:25	91 MW	1	Met10
1 August at 16:25	12 MW	2	N
1 August at 15:48	6 MW	1	N21
1 August at 05:19	5 MW	2	N20
1 August at 05:00	8 MW	3	N
1 August at 04:26	6 MW	3	N21
31 July at 22:51	27 MW	3	Terra
31 July at 18:03	203 MW	3	Aqua
31 July at 16:44	59 MW	5	N
31 July at 16:08	96 MW	6	N21
31 July at 15:23	9 MW	1	N20
31 July at 15:01	55 MW	3	N
31 July at 14:27	37 MW	3	N21
31 July at 11:47	14 MW	1	Terra
31 July at 05:38	127 MW	13	N20
31 July at 05:19	137 MW	12	N
31 July at 04:43	232 MW	13	N21
31 July at 03:58	133 MW	11	N20
31 July at 03:37	89 MW	11	N
30 July at 17:24	1,951 MW	12	Aqua
30 July at 15:40	910 MW	22	N20
30 July at 15:23	408 MW	10	N
30 July at 11:09	40 MW	1	Terra
30 July at 06:19	586 MW	10	Aqua
30 July at 05:38	974 MW	53	N
30 July at 05:02	874 MW	35	N21
30 July at 04:15	930 MW	51	N20
30 July at 03:58	691 MW	39	N
30 July at 03:22	564 MW	26	N21
29 July at 15:04	14 MW	1	N21
29 July at 14:19	6 MW	1	N20
29 July at 12:06	52 MW	2	Terra
29 July at 07:21	78 MW	2	Aqua
29 July at 05:42	113 MW	2	Aqua
29 July at 05:21	46 MW	4	N21
29 July at 04:36	98 MW	6	N20
29 July at 04:15	147 MW	6	N
29 July at 03:39	120 MW	8	N21

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