The western United States was wilting under widespread hot temperatures in late July 2006. In blazing heat, firefighters were working to contain numerous wildfires in several Western states, including Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, and Idaho. This image of the area was captured on July 27 by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite. Places where MODIS detected actively burning fires are marked in red. Four of the largest blazes (as of July 28) have been labeled: the 12,000-acre Tripod Fire in Washington; the 28,958-acre Foster Gulch Complex near the Oregon-Idaho state line; the 4,550-acre Sage Fire in California; and the 30,000-acre Winters Fire in northern Nevada. For more information on fires in the United States, visit the National Interagency Fire Center Website.
The high-resolution image provided above has a spatial resolution of 500 meters per pixel. The MODIS Rapid Response System provides this image at additional resolutions, including MODIS’ maximum spatial resolution of 250 meters per pixel.
NASA image courtesy the MODIS Rapid Response Team, Goddard Space Flight Center
