NGFS Detection of the Remington Fire
True-color imagery, above, shows the evolution of the Remington Fire in extreme northern Wyoming on 22 August 2024. (Geography note: The Wyoming/Montana border in the image is at 45oN Latitude). The initial report for this fire occurred at 8:07 AM (MDT)/1407 UTC on 22 August 2024 (note that the time at the Watch Duty website (2:33 PM, link), below, refers to the report time at that site). This was after the NGFS detection. Fire initiation occurred in a sparsely populated region of northeast Wyoming, so it should not be a surprise that the initial report was after the fire was underway.
In contrast, the weather satellite-based Next Generation Fire System detected fire at this location nearly a day earlier, starting at 2143 UTC (3:43 PM Mountain Time) on 21 August (!) as shown below. This is an excellent example showing NGFS’s importance for wildfire detection in remote regions where human eyes (or webcams) aren’t available to monitor things. The animations below show the GOES-based Fire Temperature RGB and the NGFS Microphysics RGB. The complex nature of the RGBs is in part due to cloudiness occurring over the region. (Here’s the visible imagery at 21:47:54) An NGFS detection is shown by the orange polygons at 21:47:54 UTC on 21 August. Northern Wyoming was in a region of elevated fire risk as shown in this graphic from SPC.
An important feature of the NGFS RealEarth instance is that imagery can be probed. By clicking on the NGFS pixels (that is, the orange polygons), users can view information about the surface properties in the region of the developing fire. The Probe for this NGFS polygon is shown below, including the latitude/longitude (just south of the Wyoming/Montana border), and the physical description of the land — mostly vegetation — grass and chapparal — and very little urban areas. This information can help a forecaster determine the likelihood of fire and risk to populations. It might also influence a decision to commit fire-fighting resources.
NGFS output is available at this website. Previous blog posts on NGFS capabilities are here.