Portugal — Natural Disaster Report
Europe · Live status: Elevated (13 active events)
Current situation: 13 natural disaster events are currently monitored in Portugal, with a worst severity of Moderate. Details, sources and timestamps are listed below.
Portugal faces some of Europe's most severe wildfire risk. The June 2017 Pedrógão Grande fire killed 66 people, many trapped in vehicles, and later that year further fires brought the annual toll above 100 — events that reshaped national forest and civil protection policy. Eucalyptus plantations, rural depopulation and hotter, drier summers combine to create extreme fire conditions. Portugal also has significant seismic and tsunami exposure: the 1755 Lisbon earthquake, estimated at magnitude 8.5 or above, destroyed the city with shaking, tsunami and fire, and remains a defining event in European disaster history. Drought increasingly affects the Alentejo and Algarve.
Live map — Portugal
Loading live data… · Marker positions are approximate; severity is labelled in each popup. Sources: USGS, GDACS, NASA EONET, NOAA/NWS, EMSC.
Active alerts & recent events
Latest earthquakes
Near a particular city? Earthquake history near a place · disasters reported near a place · compare Portugal's earthquake record with another country.
By hazard in Portugal
Each of these has its own page: recent activity, the season it happens in, past events and what to do.
- Earthquakes in Portugal
- Extreme Weather in Portugal
- Heatwaves in Portugal
- Heavy Rains in Portugal
- Severe Storms in Portugal
- Wildfires in Portugal
Risk profile
Wildfires June-October, most dangerous during heatwaves and dry easterly winds. Drought as a multi-year condition in the south. Earthquakes and tsunami risk from the offshore Azores-Gibraltar fault zone. Atlantic storms and coastal erosion October-March.
Official emergency authorities
Disaster displacement in Portugal
668 internal displacements
Largest single event: 300 from wildfire, beginning 13 August 2025.
A displacement is a movement, not a person: somebody forced from home more than once in a year is counted more than once. These are movements caused by disasters only — displacement caused by conflict is counted separately and is not included here.
| Year | Displacements |
|---|---|
| 2025 | 668 |
| 2024 | 696 |
Source: Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), Global Internal Displacement Database. IDMC publishes annually, so the latest year here is the latest they have finalised — not the current one.
River flood forecast — Portugal
No chance of exceeding even its 2-year flood flow in this forecast.
GloFAS alert level: Inactive · Peak expected: in 11-14 days (on 2026-11-02) · forecast of 19 Oct 2026
GloFAS forecasts are computer model output, published for information only. They are not a flood warning: only national and regional authorities issue flood warnings for their own area. A reporting point is a place on the model's river network, which may sit a few kilometres from the town it is named after. All 259 rivers →
What this site sees in Portugal
| Source | Events here, last 12 months | What it will not tell you |
|---|---|---|
| WMO Alert Hub (national weather services) | 298 | Each warning comes from one country own alerting authority, so the scale is that agency scale and is not comparable between countries. Many agencies publish no coordinates, and those warnings are placed at the centre of the country rather than where the weather is - the area name is the real answer. |
| MeteoAlarm (EUMETNET) | 295 | Europe only. It publishes no coordinates at all, so every warning here is placed at the centre of its country and the area name is the only reliable indication of where it applies. |
| NASA FIRMS | 38 | Global, but it sees only what the satellite saw on its pass, and thick cloud hides fire. A quiet day here is not evidence that nothing burned. |
| GDACS (European Commission / United Nations) | 1 | Global, but deliberately selective: it alerts on disasters likely to need INTERNATIONAL response. Serious local flooding that a national agency handles alone will not appear here. |
| European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre | 1 | Global for earthquakes, with the best coverage in Europe and the Mediterranean. It publishes nothing about any other hazard. |
| US Geological Survey | none | Global for earthquakes above roughly M4.5, and denser where there are more seismometers. It publishes nothing about any other hazard. |
| NASA EONET | none | Global and curated rather than automatic, so it is slower than the raw feeds and carries far fewer events. |
| NOAA Tsunami Warning Centers | none | These two centres warn for the US and Canadian coasts and for the Pacific and Caribbean basins. The Indian Ocean and Mediterranean have their own warning centres, which are not read here. Their routine information statements - the ones that say there is NO tsunami danger - are deliberately not imported, so an empty tsunami list means no threat was issued, not that nothing was checked. |
| NOAA National Hurricane Center | none | The Atlantic and the eastern and central Pacific only. No typhoon in the western Pacific and no cyclone in the Indian Ocean or the southern hemisphere appears here; those come from GDACS and from national services. |
| ReliefWeb (UN OCHA) | none | Global, but it reports on humanitarian RESPONSE. It arrives days after an event rather than during it, and never functions as a warning. |
Not applicable here: US National Weather Service — Covers the United States only. It publishes nothing about any other country, so its absence from a country page is not an outage. ; USGS Volcano Hazards Program — United States volcanoes only - Alaska, Hawaii, the Cascades, Yellowstone, California and the Northern Mariana Islands. It says nothing about Indonesia, Iceland, Italy or anywhere else, so its silence about a foreign eruption is not a judgement about that eruption.
Major historical disasters — Portugal
| Event | Type | Date | Fatalities |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1755 Lisbon Earthquake and Tsunami | Earthquake | Nov 1, 1755 | 50,000 |
Frequently asked questions
What natural disasters are currently active in Portugal?
There are currently 13 monitored natural disaster events in Portugal. The overall risk status is Elevated. See the live list on this page for details and sources.
What natural hazards does Portugal face?
Portugal faces some of Europe's most severe wildfire risk. The June 2017 Pedrógão Grande fire killed 66 people, many trapped in vehicles, and later that year further fires brought the annual toll above 100 — events that reshaped national forest and civil protection policy.
When is the main natural disaster season in Portugal?
Wildfires June-October, most dangerous during heatwaves and dry easterly winds. Drought as a multi-year condition in the south. Earthquakes and tsunami risk from the offshore Azores-Gibraltar fault zone. Atlantic storms and coastal erosion October-March. Seasons shift from year to year; treat these as the usual pattern, not a forecast.
Which official agency issues disaster warnings in Portugal?
Official warnings for Portugal are issued by IPMA — Portuguese Institute for Sea and Atmosphere. The link is on this page. This site aggregates and reports; it does not issue warnings, and in an emergency the national agency is the authority.
What is the deadliest recorded natural disaster in Portugal?
Of the events documented on this site, the deadliest in Portugal is the 1755 Lisbon Earthquake and Tsunami (1755), with around 50,000 deaths. Estimates range from 12,000 to 100,000 across Portugal, Spain and Morocco. This is drawn from documented records held here and is not a complete historical archive.
Where does this disaster data for Portugal come from?
Data is aggregated from official sources including USGS, GDACS (EC/UN), NASA EONET, ReliefWeb and national agencies. Every event links to its original source, and update times are shown on each record.
Data sources: USGS, GDACS (EC/UN), NASA EONET, NOAA/NWS, EMSC, ReliefWeb (UN OCHA). See data sources & attribution and methodology. This page does not replace official emergency guidance.