Dozens of fires spotted in the southeastern United States
Most of the fires that are showing up on this satellite image from the Suomi NPP satellite are prescribed fires. The Southern Area Coordination Center report for November 01, 2017 (this report changes daily) is reporting the following fires in the area:
- Ongoing uncontained large fires and active acreage: 1 fire @ 100 acres in Oklahoma (Sombrero Fire)
- Total Initial Attack fires and acreage:Â 18 fires @ 48 acres
- New fires on Federal Protected Lands:Â 1 @ 5 acres
- New fires on State Protected Lands:Â 7 @37 acres in Louisiana, Arkansas and South Carolina
- Other fires:Â 10 @ 6 acres in Alabama, Florida and Georgia
The largest fires listed are prescribed fires on state and federal lands in Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana and Texas: 25 fires @ 4,785 acres.
Prescribed fires are those deliberately set by land management authorities to take out underlying brush and dead grass so that in the event of a wildfire there is not sufficient fuel for that fire to spread too far.
NASA's Suomi NPP satellite collected this natural-color image using the VIIRS (Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite) instrument on October 30, 2017. Actively burning areas, detected by MODIS's thermal bands, are outlined in red. The VIIRS instrument which collected this image is a 22-band radiometer which collects infrared and visible light data to observe weather, climate, oceans, nightlight, wildfires, movement of ice, and changes in vegetation and landforms. Suomi NPP is the first Earth-observing satellite to measure both global climate changes and key weather variables.
Provided by NASA