Fire at a Jim Beam bourbon warehouse in Kentucky

By Scott Bachmeier • 3 July 2019

GOES-16 Near-Infrared “Snow/Ice” (1.61 µm, left), Near-Infrared “Cloud Particle Size” (2.24 µm, center) and Shortwave Infrared (3.9 µm, right) images – GLM Groups are plotted in red on the 3.9 µm images [click to play animation | MP4]

GOES-16 (GOES-East) Near-Infrared “Snow/Ice” (1.61 µm), Near-Infrared “Cloud Particle Size” (2.24 µm) and Shortwave Infrared (3.9 µm) images (above) revealed nighttime thermal signatures of a fire at a Jim Beam bourbon warehouse in Versailles, Kentucky on 03 July 2019. The fire reportedly began to burn around 0330 UTC (11:30 PM EDT on 02 July); it was thought that the fire may have been started by a lightning strike — and GOES-16 GLM Groups did indeed portray lightning activity associated with thunderstorms that were dissipating over the area around that time.

The nighttime thermal signatures seen on near-infrared 1.61 µm and 2.24 µm images (brighter white pixels) result from the fact that those two ABI spectral bands are located close to the peak emitted radiance of very hot features such as volcanic eruptions or large fires (below).

Plots of Spectral Response Functions for ABI Bands 5, 6 and 7 [click to enlarge]

The fire continued burning during the day — although it was frequently cloudy, the hot 3.9 µm thermal signature (darker red pixels) was apparent through occasional breaks in the cloud cover (below).

GOES-16 Shortwave Infrared (3.9 µm) images [click to play animation]

Categories: Fire detection, GLM, GOES-16, Lightning

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Fire at a Jim Beam bourbon warehouse in Kentucky