French Fire in Northern California

August 15, 2004

A fast-moving wildfire roared through a small northern California community on August 15, 2004, destroying numerous homes and other buildings and forcing hundreds of people to evacuate. This image of the French Fire (pixels in which fire was detected are colored yellow) was captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite on August 15. The fire is burning on either side of Trinity Mountain, and was estimated to have burned just over 9,000 acres as of the morning of August 17.

Image courtesy Jacques Descloitres, MODIS Rapid Response Team, NASA-Goddard Space Flight Center