Satellites image California wildfires + Using satellites to spot wildfires globally within 15 minutes

California has been hit with more wildfires than usual this year. Here is a short video from NOAA showing fires as seen by the GOES-16 satellite:

An article from NASA about the fires and satellite observations of them:

Wildfires Running Amok in California

Fires broke out quickly this past weekend in northern California.  Sixty mile an hour winds did nothing to help either quell or stop the runaway fires from jumping fire lines and decimating whole neighborhoods.  Dry, hot conditions which have been problematic for much of the west coast this summer erupted into flames after a series of lightning strikes. October is always a difficult time in California for wildfires, but this year, the wildfire eruptions seem extreme even to the most seasoned Californian.  The deadly combination of lightning, winds, and hot weather which dries the landscape into tinder is all it takes to set off a wildfire that will consume thousands and thousands of acres in just a few short hours.

Fifteen fires ignited late Sunday evening, remained mostly uncontained, and are likely to continue spreading because of heat, low humidity and wind with many of these fires located in Sonoma Valley and Napa Valley, heart of California’s wine country.  Despite the massive number of firefighters deployed to fight the flames, most fires remain 0% contained at present.  Too many other factors are in play that make containment difficult including high winds, dry conditions, and low humidity.

NASA’s Aqua satellite collected this natural-color image with the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, MODIS, instrument on October 09, 2017. Actively burning areas (hot spots), detected by MODIS’s thermal bands, are outlined in red. Each hot spot is an area where the thermal detectors on the MODIS instrument recognized temperatures higher than background. When accompanied by plumes of smoke, as in this image, such hot spots are diagnostic for fire.NASA image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz LANCE/EOSDIS MODIS Rapid Response Team, GSFC. Caption by Lynn Jenner

For specific incident information on any particular fire, please visit the California Fire Incident Information website.

More sat photos :

FireSat is a project started at NASA JPL to develop a constellation of satellites with sensors specialized at spotting wildfires. The goal is to detect and report a wildfire anywhere in the world within 15 minutes of its starting.

The FireSat sensors would be able to detect fires that are at least 35 to 50 feet (10 to 15 meters) wide, within an average of 15 minutes from the time they begin. Within three minutes of detecting a fire from orbit, FireSat would notify emergency responders in the area of the fire, improving support for time-critical response decisions.

The sensors and their associated products for data analysis would also be able to locate explosions, oil spills and other dangerous events involving high heat around the globe.

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