Fires in the USA

Fires in the USA

23 April 2008

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Burn Scar near Fort Carson, Colorado

A fast-moving brushfire raced across the Colorado landscape near Fort Carson in mid-April. The blaze forced evacuations in the area and took more than a week—which included a beneficial snow storm—to contain. The fire scorched more than 9,000 acres according to news reports, and a pilot lost his life while helping to fight the fire.

TERRA
20 April 2008

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(source: earth observatory)

This image of the area burned by the fire was captured by the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer(ASTER) on NASA’s Terra satellite on 20 April 2008. The area is about 18 kilometers southwest of Fort Carson, in southern El Paso County, Colorado. The image uses visible and infrared light to enhance the differences between vegetation (red), bare ground (gray and beige), and the burned area (charcoal). Highway 115 (tan line running north-south along western edge of burned area) served as a firebreak, helping firefighters prevent the blaze from spreading into the more rugged terrain to the west.

Smoke in New Mexico

This GOES satellite image taken at 0000 UTC on 21 April 2008 shows a heavy smoke plume from a large fire in central New Mexico extending eastward into Texas. Another light smoke plume from a fire in Oklahoma extends northward into Kansas.

IMAGE D6140: GOES-11 <> Image Type=combine <> 04/21/2008 00:00 UTC

source: www.osei.noaa.gov

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