Fires in California
Fires in California
22 July 2008
Since the first weekend of summer 2008, California has been taxed by dozens of forest fires that were triggered by dry thunderstormsthunderstorms that produce lightning, gusty winds, but little rain. As of the third week of July, several of the fires were tens of thousands of acres and still only partially contained. This image of Northern California shows the fires on Friday, 18 July 2008. The image was captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASAs Terra satellite. Places where MODIS detected actively burning fires are outlined in red.
Several of the fire complexes in Northern California affected more than 50,000 acres as of 21 July, according to reports from the National Interagency Fire Center. The Iron/Alps Complexes were 57,154 acres, having grown 1,609 acres in the previous 24 hours. The nearby Lime Complex was 92,867 acres, having grown 3,044 acres in the previous 24 hours. In Southern California (pictured in the large image), the Basin Complex was still burning near Big Sur. That fire merged with the Indians Fire to the east, and their combined acreage was more than 134,000.
TERRA
18 July 2008
The high-resolution image provided above is at MODIS maximum spatial resolution (level of detail) of 250 meters per pixel.
(source: earth observatory)
See also latest news on the media page.
