Numerous wildfires in Oklahoma
1-minute GOES-16 Visible images with overlays of the GOES-16 Fire Mask derived product and 30-minute Peak Wind Gusts, from 1501 UTC on 14 March to 0000 UTC on 15 March [click to play MP4 animation]
Aided by strong southwesterly winds gusting as high as 72 knots (83 mph) behind a cold front, more than 130 wildfires rapidly developed and spread across 44 counties in Oklahoma on 14 March 2025. 1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sector GOES-16 (GOES-East) Visible images (above) included overlays of 1-minute GOES-16 Fire Mask derived product (a component of the Fire Detection and Characterization Algorithm FDCA) and 30-minute Peak Wind Gusts — which showed a marked increase in wildfire thermal signatures after about 1900 UTC. Notable wildfires affected the Oklahoma City (KOKC) area and nearby Norman, in addition to Guthrie (KGOK) and Stillwater (KSWO) — prompting the issuance of Fire Warnings and evacuation notices for those (and many other) locations.
The wildfire just southwest of Stillwater burned through an Oklahoma Mesonet site:
GOES-16 Visible images that included plots of Ceiling/Visibility (below) showed that the blowing dust and smoke restricted the surface visibility at many locations across Oklahoma, to values as low as 1/4 mile at times.
1-minute GOES-16 Visible images with overlays of the GOES-16 Fire Mask derived product and plots of Ceiling/Visibiliy, from 1501 UTC on 14 March to 0000 UTC on 15 March [click to play MP4 animation]
The strong winds responsible for the wildfires were also lofting large amounts of blowing dust across the Southern Plains. 5-minute CONUS Sector GOES-16 True Color RGB images from the CSPP GeoSphere site (below) displayed the broad swath of dense blowing dust (shades of tan) originating from New Mexico/Texas — as well as another plume of blowing dust moving south-southeastward from eastern Colorado to southwestern Kansas (on the back side of a deep low pressure center). In addition, a large smoke plume (pale shades of white) originating in Oklahoma was rising above the blowing dust as it eventually moved northeast across eastern Kansas.
5-minute GOES-16 True Color RGB images, from 1501-2336 UTC on 14 March [click to play MP4 animation]
===== 15 March Update =====
5-minute GOES-16 daytime True Color RGB + Nighttime Microphysics RGB images, from 1646 UTC on 14 March to 1646 UTC on 15 March [click to play MP4 animation]
A 24-hour animation of GOES-16 daytime True Color RGB + Nighttime Microphysics RGB images showed the long-range transport of airborne dust from New Mexico/Texas to the western Great Lakes. Dust exhibited brighter shades of magenta in the Nighttime Microphysics RGB imagery.