Having grown 17,000 acres in the preceding 24 hours, Oregon’s Egley Complex Fire was estimated to be 35,000 acres as of July 11, 2007, according to the morning report from the National Interagency Fire Center. Consisting of six fires, the complex was exhibiting extreme fire behavior, and had caused intermittent road closures and evacuations. This image of the fire was captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite on July 10. Places where MODIS detected actively burning fire are outlined in red. Smoke pools over the basin. Irrigated areas appear bright green, while natural vegetation on the mountains appears duller green.
The large image provided above has a spatial resolution (level of detail) of 250 meters per pixel. The MODIS Rapid Response Team provides twice-daily images of the western United States in additional resolutions and formats, including an infrared-enhanced version that makes burned areas appear brick red.
NASA image courtesy the MODIS Rapid Response Team, Goddard Space Flight Center
