NASA MODIS Image of the Day: August 20, 2012 – Fires and smoke in western United States
Wildfires continued to burn across the western United States in mid-August, 2012. On August 16, when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard NASA’s Aqua satellite passed over the region and captured this true-color image, numerous wildfires were blazing in the forests of Idaho and in California. In this image, red outlines indicate hot spots where MODIS detected unusually warm surface temperatures associated with fires. Thick smoke streamed east from the Idaho fires and northeast from most of the California fires, contributing to a cloud of haze that covered much of Oregon and Nevada as well. Not only did these wildfires cause evacuation of hundreds of people and damage to numerous structures, including destroying wind turbines at Jawbone Canyon Recreation Area near Tehachapi, California, but the smoke has affected much of the United States. On August 16, 2012, the “Smog Blog” at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County reported that dense smoke stretched from the West Coast to the Great Lakes, and northward into Canada. Thinner smoke persisted across most of the United States. The Incident Information System reported that, as of August 19, some of the largest fires in the western states—the Chips and Reading fires in California and the Mustang Complex, Halstead, and Trinity Ridge in Idaho—continued to burn, promising to send more thick smoke eastward across the country.
