The Chance Fire raced rapidly across sagebrush and juniper woodlands in northeastern Nevada near the Ruby Mountains on August 29, 2005. This image of the blaze was captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite; the active fire perimeter that MODIS detected is outlined in red. The fire is burning very close to the I80 interstate northeast of the town of Elko, Nevada. Many people voluntarily evacuated their homes as the winds drove the fire quickly across the hilly terrain. As of August 30, firefighters estimated the 17,500-acre blaze was about 30 percent contained.
The high-resolution image provided above has a spatial resolution of 250 meters per pixel. The MODIS Rapid Response System provides this image at additional resolutions.
NASA image courtesy the MODIS Rapid Response Team, Goddard Space Flight Center
