The largest fire in Utah’s recorded history was around 329,000 acres as of July 11, 2007, according to the morning report from the National Interagency Fire Center. In the previous 24 hours the fire grew nearly 18,000 acres. The blaze was racing through grass and brush, driven by wind gusts. Houses and businesses, a natural gas pipeline, and a geothermal power plant were threatened.

This image of the fire was captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite on July 10. Places around the perimeter of the massive fire that were actively burning are outlined in red. The burn scar itself appears dark brown compared to the tan color of the dry grasslands surrounding it.

Forests on the Wasatch Mountains (image right) are dull green, while dry lakes and streams are white. A few scattered circles of green vegetation show farmland watered by center-pivot irrigation. At lower right of the top image, the Colorado River carves through the salmon-colored rock of the Colorado Plateau at Glen Canyon.

The large image provided above has a spatial resolution (level of detail) of 250 meters per pixel. The MODIS Rapid Response Team provides twice-daily images of the region in additional resolutions.

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