More than a dozen large fires were burning in Arizona in mid-July 2005. While the area wilted under an intense heatwave, “dry” lightning and gusty winds pushed fire danger to the extreme. As of July 21, the largest of the blazes was the 35,000-acre Edge Complex Fire east of Phoenix.

This image from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite was captured on July 20, 2005. Actively burning fires that MODIS detected are marked in red.

The high-resolution image provided above has a spatial resolution of 250 meters per pixel. The MODIS Rapid Response System provides this image at additional resolutions.

NASA image courtesy the MODIS Rapid Response Team, Goddard Space Flight Center