Fires across the Southern Plains and Lower Mississippi Valley

By Scott Bachmeier • 3 March 2022

GOES-16 Shortwave Infrared (3.9 µm), Fire Temperature RGB. Fire Power, Fire Temperature and Fire Area products [click to play animated GIF | MP4]

GOES-16 (GOES-East) Shortwave Infrared (3.9 µm), Fire Temperature RGB. Fire Power, Fire Temperature and Fire Area products (above) displayed signatures of widespread prescribed and/or agriculture fires across parts of the Southern Plans and Lower Mississippi Valley on 03 March 2022. The Fire Power, Fire Temperature and Fire Area derived products are components of the GOES Fire Detection and Characterization Algorithm FDCA; Fire Temperature values were as high as 2300 K, with Fire Power values reaching 220 MW for some of the hottest fires.

Even though the majority of these fires were relatively brief and rather small in areal coverage, many produced notable smoke plumes — which were highlighted by GOES-16 True Color RGB images created using Geo2Grid (below). This smoke reduced the surface visibility to 7-9 miles at a few locations, but one site in southern Missouri reported a visibility as low as 3/4 mile.

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

Categories: Air quality, Fire detection, Geo2Grid, GOES-16, Red-Green-Blue (RGB) images

CIMSS Satellite Blog

CIMSS Satellite Blog

Fires across the Southern Plains and Lower Mississippi Valley