Brief flareup of the Moose Fire in Idaho
1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sector GOES-17 (GOES-West) “Red” Visible (0.64 µm), Shortwave Infrared (3.9 µm), Fire Power and Fire Temperature images (above) showed an unusual early-morning flareup of the Moose Fire in Idaho on 21 July 2022. The Fire Temperature and Fire Power derived products are components of the GOES Fire Detection and Characterization Algorithm FDCA.During this brief flareup, the peak values of Shortwave Infrared, Fire Power and Fire Temperature were a rather modest 83.17ºC, 886.98 MW and 845.37 K respectively — however, the fire was hot enough to produce a notable smoke plume that then drifted southeastward. This flareup apparently occurred during a local increase in terrain-driven wind speeds, around the time that the nocturnal temperature inversion was eroding (which aided in the rapid vertical ventilation of fresh smoke).
GOES-17 True Color RGB images created using Geo2Grid (below) provided a clearer view of the smoke plume as it curled southeastward — along with the ventilation of smoke from nearby valleys that had settled into lower elevations beneath the nocturnal temperature inversion.