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A large wildfire that began near the town of Fallbrook, California on Sunday 10 February 2002, extended westward
into Camp Pendleton burning over 5000 acres and destroying over 30 homes by Tuesday morning
(as reported by the San
Diego Union-Tribune newspaper). The fire was possibly started by smoldering debris
from earlier fires. At around 18:30 UTC (10:30 AM Pacific Standard Time) on Sunday, observers reported smoldering
conditions in the area and firefighters returned to the scene. The Santa Ana winds gusting up to 50 MPH caused the
fire to flare up very quickly. The Wildfire Automated Biomass Burning Algorithm
(WF_ABBA) first detected the fire at 20:00
UTC (12:00 PM PST) in the NOAA GOES-10 data. At this time the GOES
WF_ABBA already reported the fire pixel as
saturated (maximum detectable temperature), indicating a very intense fire. By 20:15 UTC (12:15 PM PST) the
Wildfire ABBA also detected the fire
in NOAA GOES-8 data as a saturated pixel. As the
GOES-10 and GOES-8 animations show,
the fire quickly grew to cover several pixels but died down after nightfall.
