Wildfires in Southern California captured by satellite
Wildfires throughout Southern California has been captured by the backward (northward)-viewing camera of the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) instrument on NASA's Terra satellite. The image shown here was acquired mid-morning on 30 August 2009.
It is reported that the Station fire in La Canada/Flintridge, one of the four major fires, located not far from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, had burned 105,000 acres of the Angeles National Forest, destroying 21 homes and threatening more than 12,000 others. Several clouds, created by the Station Fire, are visible above the smoke plumes rising from the San Gabriel Mountains north of Los Angeles in the left-centre of the image.
High temperatures, low relative humidities, dense vegetation that has not burned in decades, and years of extended drought are all contributing to the explosive growth of fires.
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