Hot, dry summer conditions set the stage for several large bushfires in southern Australia. This image, taken by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite on February 10, 2014, shows a fire or series of fires burning immediately north of Melbourne, Victoria. The fires are outlined in red. While not as large as fires burning to the east in East Gippsland, these fires are burning in populated areas. The largest in the group is the Mickleham fire, a fast-moving grassfire that threatened several communities (including Kilmore and Wallan) and burned at least 34 homes.
NASA Earth Observatory image by Jesse Allen, using data from the Land Atmosphere Near real-time Capability for EOS (LANCE). Caption by Holli Riebeek.
