Columns of thick smoke unfurled from forest fires burning across Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming and spread eastward across the plains at the foothills of the Northern Rocky Mountains on August 13, 2007. This image of the area was captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite at 2:00 p.m. local time (U.S. Mountain Daylight Time). Locations where the sensor detected active fire are outlined in red. Fires are especially active in the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness Area south of Idaho’s Salmon River. Gray-brown smoke cuts a diagonal swath across the center of the image. Smoke from these fires has been crossing the United States off and on throughout August, degrading air quality as far away as the East Coast.
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 region in additional resolutions.
NASA image by Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team, Goddard Space Flight Center.
