GOES-16 Views a House Fire in Rural Wisconsin
GOES-16 Advanced Baseline Imagery (ABI) Band 7 Shortwave Infrared (3.90 µm) imagery, 0400-0459 UTC (Click to animate)
GOES-16 viewed the development of a house fire over rural Winnebago County in Nekimi Township, west of Lake Winnebago on late Sunday night 24 February 2019. The animation above shows warm pixel developing starting at 0439 UTC. One-minute imagery was available because the county falls within the northern part of the westernmost default mesoscale sector for GOES-16.
The toggle below compares the 0438 and 0439 UTC imagery. (Actually 04:38:51 and 04:39:51). The fire becomes apparent to GOES in the later image. Google satellite views suggest the house had a footprint around 2000 square feet.
Winnebago County Emergency Services were alerted to this fire at 0417 UTC. The background temperature for the 3.9 µm imagery on this date was around -16ºC. Pixel brightness temperatures increased to -2.6ºC between 0438 and 0454 UTC.
GOES-16 Advanced Baseline Imagery (ABI) Band 7 Shortwave Infrared (3.90 µm) imagery, 0438 and 0439 UTC on 25 February 2019 (Click to enlarge)
Thanks to Rich Mamrosh, NWS Green Bay, for alerting us to this interesting case!