In the late morning of September 2, 2020, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite acquired this natural-color image of smoke from California wildfires blowing westward over the cloud-topped Pacific Ocean.
Most of the smoke originated from the August Complex fire, which was burning in Mendocino National Forest. By September 2, that fire had burned more than 261,000 acres (408 square miles/1,060 square kilometers) and was 20 percent contained.
NASA Earth Observatory image by Joshua Stevens, using MODIS data from NASA EOSDIS/LANCE and GIBS/Worldview. Caption by Kathryn Hansen.
