More than 50 municipalities in the districts of Faro, Beja, Lisbon, Santarém, Castelo Branco, Portalegre, Guarda, Bragança, Vila Real and Viseu are today in very high danger of fire, indicates the Portuguese Institute of the Sea and the Atmosphere (IPMA).

The Institute also placed several municipalities in all districts of the mainland, except Viana do Castelo, at very high risk of fire.

Due to the hot weather, the fire danger will remain high at least until Saturday.

The IPMA has placed the south coast of Madeira in maximum danger of rural fire, which is under red warning, the most serious of a scale of three, until 20:00 today due to hot weather.

In a statement, the IPMA states that “the joint action of an anticyclone located northeast of the Azores archipelago, which extends in a ridge to the Bay of Biscay, and a low-pressure valley located between North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula, allows the transport of a mass of hot and dry air to the Madeira archipelago”.

Values ​​of around 30 degrees Celsius are expected over the next few days in the archipelago as a whole, which on the southern slopes can reach values ​​of around 35 degrees.

This risk, determined by the IPMA, has five levels, ranging from reduced to maximum and calculations are obtained from air temperature, relative humidity, wind speed and amount of precipitation in the last 24 hours.

The IPMA predicts for today on the continent cloudy or clear skies, obscured by smoke particles, coming from the fires in Canada, sometimes strong wind on the west coast and a drop in temperature in the south, especially on the west coast.

The minimum temperatures will fluctuate between 16 degrees Celsius (in Viana do Castelo and Braga) and 24 (in Castelo Branco) and the maximum between 27 degrees (in Aveiro) and 40 (in Évora).

Since the beginning of the year, 3,816 occurrences of fire have already affected 8,729 hectares of rural areas.