Dozens of large fires were burning across British Columbia, which dominates the upper left of this scene, on August 21, 2003. Hundreds of residents in this mountainous Canadian province are already evacuated, and thousands more are on alert. Thick smoke chokes the skies and the fires spread rapidly through the forested terrain. This image of the fires, marked with yellow dots, was captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on the Terra satellite on August 21.
Image courtesy Jacques Descloitres, MODIS Rapid Response Team at NASA GSFC>