In the southern United States on March 5, 2006, a number of fires were puffing small plumes of smoke that created hazy conditions across the region. This image of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida was captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite. Places where the sensor detected actively burning fires are outlined in red. In Alabama, several individual puffs of smoke are visible in locations where the sensor did not detect a fire. This may be because those fires were not hot enough or large enough for the sensor to register them as “hot spots.” A swath of haze lingers over the Gulf of Mexico at lower right. At lower left is the Mississippi River Delta.
NASA image courtesy the MODIS Rapid Response Team, Goddard Space Flight Center