On Friday afternoon, November 18, 2005, a fire started in a remote area in the mountains surrounding Ventura, California. Fueled by gusty Santa Ana winds (dry winds that blow seaward from interior deserts), the blaze grew rapidly, churning smoke out over the Santa Barbara Channel. This image was captured on November 18 by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite. The actively burning part of the fire that MODIS detected is outlined in red.
The high-resolution image provided above has a spatial resolution of 250 meters per pixel. The MODIS Rapid Response Team provides this image at additional resolutions. The high-resolution image also shows a much wider area, showing additional fires burning to the south of Tijuana, Mexico.
NASA image courtesy the MODIS Rapid Response Team,Goddard Space Flight Center
