Fires in USA
Fires in USA
29 June 2007
Angora Fire
On the weekend of 23 June 2007, a wildfire broke out south ofLake Tahoe, which stretches across the California-Nevada border. By 28 June, the AngoraFire had burned more than 200 homes and forced some 2,000 residents toevacuate, according to The Seattle Times and the CentralValley Business Times.
On 27 June, the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and ReflectionRadiometer (ASTER) on NASAs Terra satellite captured this image of the burn scar left by the Angora fire. The burnscar is dark gray, or charcoal. Water bodies, including the southern tip of LakeTahoe and Fallen Leaf Lake, are pale silvery blue, the silver color a result ofsunlight reflecting off the surface of the water. Vegetation ranges in colorfrom dark to bright green. Streets are light gray, and the customary pattern ofmeandering residential streets and cul-de-sacs appears throughout the image,including the area that burned. The burn scar shows where the fire obliteratedsome of the residential areas just east of Fallen Leaf Lake.
TERRA
27 June 2007
According to news reports, the U.S. Forest Service had expressed optimismabout containing the fire within a week of the outbreak, but a few days afterthe fire started, it jumped a defense, forcing the evacuation of hundreds moreresidents. Strong winds that had been forecast for 27 June, however, did notmaterialize, allowing firefighters to regain ground in controlling the blaze. On27 June, authorities hoped that the fire would be completely contained by 3 July.According to estimates provided in the daily report from the NationalInteragency Fire Center, the fire had burned 3,100 acres (about 12.5 squarekilometers) and was about 55 percent contained as of June 28. Some mandatoryevacuations remained in effect.
(source: EarthObservatory)
Kenai Peninsula Fire, Alaska
On Alaskas Kenai Peninsula, a wildfire that started 19 Junehad destroyed at least 70 cabins, homes, and outbuildings as of 27 June 2007.Damp weather over the 23 June weekend helped firefighters make progress, but didnot contain the blaze. The Alaska Interagency Coordination Center estimated thatthe fire was 54,773 acres on 27 June. The biggest fuel source was swaths ofspruce trees killed by the insect pest known as the sprucebark beetle.
AQUA
21 June 2007
This image shows the Caribou Hills fire on 21 June 2007, as observed by theModerate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASAs Aqua satellite. Places whereMODIS detected actively burning fire are marked in red. Smoke (and thin clouds,image left) give the scene a hazy look. The waters in Cook Inlet appear a muddybrown in many places and bright green in others; rivers here deposit very finelyground sedimentcreated by the scraping of glaciers over the landscapeintothe coastal waters. The fine sediment colors the water. Farther out to sea (bottomleft), the waters appear a deeper, clearer blue.
The large image provided above has a spatial resolution (level of detail) of250 meters per pixel.
(source: EarthObservatory)
