As wildfires rage across northern California, enormous smoke plumes are smothering cities and towns in the San Joaquin Valley and San Francisco Bay area. On August 19, 2020, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this natural-color image just before noon.
The smoke has caused unhealthy breathing conditions and ash-covered cars. More than 20,000 people were ordered to evacuate some neighborhoods near the Santa Cruz Mountains.
NASA Earth Observatory image by Lauren Dauphin, using MODIS data from NASA EOSDIS/LANCE and GIBS/Worldview. Text by Kasha Patel.
