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Prescribed burns across the central US

By Scott Bachmeier •

GOES-16 True Color RGB images [click to play animation | MP4]

GOES-16 True Color RGB images [click to play animation | MP4]

Every Spring season, many states conduct prescribed burns as a part of land management within forests, parks, wetlands etc — and GOES-16 (GOES-East) True Color RGB images created using Geo2Grid (above) showed a large number of smoke plumes associated with prescribed burning across parts of the central US on 02 April 2021.

Of particular interest was a very long smoke plume that was seen streaming northward across southern Lake Michigan — a closer view using GOES-16 True Color RGB images centered over that area (below) indicated that 2 separate plumes merged into one larger/longer smoke plume that continued to drift north-northeastward toward the west coast of Lower Michigan. The source of these smoke plumes was the combination of a small prescribed burn and a larger wildfire within the Indiana Dunes National Park near the coast of Lake Michigan.

GOES-16 True Color RGB images [click to play animation | MP4]

GOES-16 True Color RGB images [click to play animation | MP4]

375-meter resolution Suomi NPP VIIRS True Color RGB and Shortwave Infrared (3.74 µm) images (below) provided a more detailed view of the smoke plume over far southern Lake Michigan, as well as thermal anomalies (clusters of hot pixels) associated with the industrial sites producing the smoke.

Suomi NPP VIIRS True Color RGB and Shortwave Infrared (3.74 µm) images [click to enlarge]

Suomi NPP VIIRS True Color RGB and Shortwave Infrared (3.74 µm) images [click to enlarge]

The pair of 1-minute GOES-16 Mesoscale Domain Sectors was positioned to cover the northern and southern portions of the central US  — and a small overlap of the sectors provided 30-second imagery over the Nebraska/Kansas border area. 30-second GOES-16 Fire Temperature RGB images (below) offered a qualitative view of the locations and relative intensities of a few prescribed burns in the southwestern portion of Nebraska.

GOES-16 Fire Temperature RGB images [click to play animation | MP4]

GOES-16 Fire Temperature RGB images [click to play animation | MP4]

Categories: Fire detection, GOES-16, Red-Green-Blue (RGB) images, Suomi NPP, VIIRS