Fire in New Jersey
GOES-12 3.9µm InfraRed (IR) imagery (above; Java animation) showed a large “hot spot” associated with a wildfire in New Jersey — this fire was apparently started by a flare from a military F-16 fighter jet on a routine training exercise (CNN article), which ignited the dry shrub and oak pine in that area during the afternoon of 15 May 2007. In less than 90 minutes this fire became hot enough to saturate the GOES-12 3.9µm detectors, causing the brightness temperatures to “roll over” and be displayed as a very “cold” pixels (white enhancement) — the GOES-12 Wildfire ABBA product at 21:15 UTC (below) indicated a large area of yellow-colored saturated fire pixels.
A smoke plume was seen on GOES-12 visible channel imagery (below; Java animation), drifting eastward over the adjacent offshore waters of the Atlantic Ocean. This smoke plume was also detected on radar. As of 16 May, this fire had burned over 13,000 acres, damaging about a dozen homes and causing thousands of residents to evacuate.
