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Three Rivers Fire in New Mexico

By Scott Bachmeier •

GOES-17 Shortwave Infrared (3.9 µm) (top left), GOES-17 Fire Temperature RGB (top right), GOES-16 Fire Power (bottom left) and GOES-16 Fire Temperature (bottom right) [click to play animation | MP4]

GOES-17 Shortwave Infrared (3.9 µm) (top left), GOES-17 Fire Temperature RGB (top right), GOES-16 Fire Power (bottom left) and GOES-16 Fire Temperature (bottom right) [click to play animation | MP4]

1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sector GOES-17 (GOES-West) Shortwave Infrared (3.9 µm) and Fire Temperature RGB along with 5-minute  GOES-16 (GOES-East) Fire Power and GOES-16 Fire Temperature derived products (above) showed the thermal signature of the rapidly-growing Three Rivers Fire in New Mexico on 26 April 2021. The maximum GOES-17 Shortwave Infrared brightness temperature was 138.7ºC — which is the saturation temperature for those ABI detectors — every minute for a solid hour between 1901-2001 UTC. Peak GOES-16 Fire Power and Fire Temperature values during that time were in excess of 2960 MW and 2960 K, respectively. At nearby Ruidoso, southwesterly winds were gusting as high 39 knots.

GOES-16 True Color RGB images created using Geo2Grid (below) revealed 2 distinct “fire jump” events (after 20 UTC, and again after 22 UTC), when smoke/cloud material was ejected to higher altitudes than the primary smoke plume. In addition, southwest of the large smoke plume a smaller and more diffuse plume of blowing gypsum dust could be seen streaming northeastward from White Sands National Park.

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

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


Categories: Fire detection, GOES-16, GOES-17, Red-Green-Blue (RGB) images