IPMA Puts All Continental Portugal, Madeira and Azores at Very High UV Exposure Through 13 June — Twelve Concelhos in Five Districts Hit Maximum Wildfire Risk
IPMA lifts the ultraviolet-radiation index to very high across every Portuguese district through Friday 13 June, with Faro maxing at 34°C and twelve concelhos in Santarém, Portalegre, Castelo Branco, Évora and Faro on top-tier wildfire alert.
IPMA (Instituto Português do Mar e da Atmosfera — Portuguese Institute for Sea and Atmosphere) lifted the ultraviolet-radiation index to "very high" across every district of Portugal continental on Tuesday, 9 June, with the same band extended to the Madeira and Azores archipelagos and the warning expected to hold at least through Friday, 13 June. The escalation pushes Portugal into the second-highest tier on IPMA's five-step scale, where the recommended kit becomes UV-filtered sunglasses, a wide-brim hat, T-shirt cover, parasol, dermatologically-rated sunscreen and the explicit avoidance of child sun exposure during the 11:00–17:00 peak window.
Where the temperatures land
IPMA's forecast file pegs minimum temperatures at 11°C in Viana do Castelo, Bragança, Braga and Guarda, climbing to 18°C in Faro. Maxima are forecast between 19°C in Aveiro and 34°C in Faro, with the Algarve and lower Alentejo carrying the country's highest sensible-heat readings through the working week. The interior is expected to step up further on Wednesday and Thursday as a continental ridge nudges 850-hectopascal temperatures into the mid-20s — a profile that historically delivers Portugal's earliest summer fire-weather windows.
Twelve concelhos at maximum wildfire risk
On the wildfire-risk index — the parallel mapping that the Autoridade Nacional de Emergência e Proteção Civil (National Authority for Emergency and Civil Protection, ANEPC) uses to set the DECIR (Dispositivo Especial de Combate a Incêndios Rurais — Special Rural Fire-Combat Device) posture — twelve concelhos across five districts ranked at the top "máximo" (maximum) tier for 9 June:
- Santarém: Tomar
- Portalegre: Portalegre, Marvão, Castelo de Vide, Nisa
- Castelo Branco: Castelo Branco, Idanha-a-Nova, Covilhã
- Évora: Reguengos de Monsaraz
- Faro: Loulé, São Brás de Alportel, Tavira
The twelve-concelho count narrows from the 25 that IPMA flagged on 8 June, with the eastern-frontier corridor along Portalegre and Castelo Branco — historically the Beira Baixa and Alto Alentejo fire spine — concentrating the bulk of the top-tier alerts. The wildfire-risk map is forecast to widen again on Wednesday and Thursday as the heat trough tightens.
What residents and visitors should do
The combination of very high UV and elevated fire risk pushes IPMA's standing advisories to their summer protocol. For ultraviolet exposure, the dermatology benchmark used by the Direção-Geral da Saúde (Directorate-General of Health, DGS) is SPF 30 or higher reapplied every two hours and after swimming, with paediatric guidance escalating to SPF 50 and physical-barrier clothing. For wildfire risk, residents in the twelve top-tier concelhos remain barred from rural burns, smoking inside forested zones, fireworks of any class and the use of brush-cutting machinery during the 11:00–17:00 daytime window. The Programa de Defesa da Floresta contra Incêndios (Forest Defence Programme against Fires) hotline 117 channels suspicious ignitions to ANEPC dispatchers.
The Algarve tourist boards have asked operators of guided walks, kayak tours and Via Algarviana hiking segments to brief participants on the UV-protection bundle and to carry extra water across all afternoon departures through Friday.
