Morgan Fire, California

Morgan Fire, California

On September 10, 2013, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this image of the Morgan fire burning in California, southeast of Clayton. Red outlines indicate hot spots where MODIS detected unusually warm surface temperatures associated with fire. The fire started on September 8, 2013. Two days later, it had burned about 3,200 acres (1,300 hectares) and forced the evacuation of dozens of homes. According to the National Interagency Fire Center, a total of 3.9 million acres (1.6 million hectares) had burned during the 2013 wildfire season in the United States as of September 9. Over the past ten years, the average number of U.S. acres burned by early September was 6.4 million acres (2.6 million hectares).

NASA image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz, LANCE/EOSDIS MODIS Rapid Response Team at NASA GSFC. Caption by Adam Voiland.