According to the July 23 report from the Canadian Forest Service, fire activity in the third week of July 2008 was near average. The number of fires was “typical,” and the area burned was just slightly above average. Nevertheless, fire danger was extreme in parts of the country, including across a swath of land stretching northeast from southern British Columbia to the Great Slave Lake region in the Northwest Territories.
This natural-color satellite image from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite shows Great Slave Lake and neighboring parts of Alberta and Saskatchewan on July 26, 2008. Numerous large fires (marked in red) billow clouds of gray-brown smoke.
NASA image by Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team. Caption by Rebecca Lindsey.
