September 29, 2022 - Fires in Pacific Northwest

Fires
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A robust wildfire season continued across the U.S. Pacific Northwest
through late September 2022, spurred by vegetation dried out following
a warm summer with sparse rainfall.

On September 27, 2022, the Moderate Resolution Imaging
Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on board NASA’s Aqua satellite acquired a
true-color image of smoke pouring from multiple wildfires burning in
western Washington state. With moist morning fog lying across the
Pacific Coast, most of the blazes were found in the forested Cascade
Range.

InciWeb Incident Information System lists seven large fires active in
western Washington as of September 28. These include, from north to
south, the Chilliwack Complex which has burned 7,388 acres; the NW
Paysayten Complex, on 17,998 acres; the Suiattle River Fire at 80
acres; the White River and Irving Peak fires burning on 9,579 acres;
MOHR at 6,944 acres; the Goat Rocks Fire at 4,029 acres; and Kalama
Fire at 432 acres.

Each red “hot spot” marks an area where the thermal bands on the MODIS
instrument detected high temperatures. When combined with typical
smoke, as in this image, such hot spots are diagnostic for an area of
actively burning fire. More than 7 hot spots can be seen in this image.
This is likely because many of the fires are either “complexes”, which
are multiple small fires handled as one larger incident, or may have
multiple actively burning fronts in a single incident.

The last few days have brought cooler temperatures to much of the
region, especially in the southern section of Washington, where a cold
from moved through on September 28, bringing periods of light showers
along with cooler temperatures and higher relative humidity. Cooler
temperatures and light rain should prevail for the next day or so
before a warming trend returns near the weekend.

Image Facts
Satellite: Aqua
Date Acquired: 9/27/2022
Resolutions: 1km (78.9 KB), 500m (266.7 KB), 250m (775.7
KB)
Bands Used: 1,4,3
Image Credit: MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC



https://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/individual.php?db_date=2022-09-29

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