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Max Road Miramar Fire in the Florida Everglades

By Scott Bachmeier •

1-minute GOES-19 GeoColor RGB images with an overlay of NGFS Fire Detection polygons and Surface Observations, from 1630-2300 UTC on 10 May [click to play MP4 animation]

1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sector GOES-19 (GOES-East) GeoColor RGB images with an overlay of Next Generation Fire System (NGFS) Fire Detection polygons (above) provided a view of the thermal signature, pyrocumulus clouds and smoke associated with the Max Road Miramar Fire Fire  —  which began burning in the Florida Everglades (just west of the Miami – Fort Lauderdale metro area) during the early afternoon hours on 10 May 2026 (the initial NGFS detection was at 1636 UTC or 12:36 PM EDT). A great deal of smoke was transported eastward across the Miami metro area and out over the adjacent offshore waters. By the end of day, the fire had burned 4800 acres. Vegetation fuels were dry, since that portion of southeast Florida had been experiencing Moderate to Extreme Drought conditions.

At 1822 UTC, the wildfire first exhibited a 3.9 µm shortwave infrared brightness temperature of 138ºC (below) — which is the saturation temperature of GOES-19 ABI Band 7 detectors. The fire continued to intermittently exhibit this saturation temperature during the remainder of the day, even not long before sunset at 2300 UTC.

GOES-19 GeoColor RGB image at 1822 UTC on 10 May, with a sample of the NGFS Fire Detection polygon exhibiting a 3.9 µm saturation temperature of 138ºC [click to enlarge]

A larger-scale view of GOES-19 True Color RGB images from the CSPP GeoSphere site (below) better showed the offshore transport of smoke. Overshooting tops were occasionally seen with pyrocumulus clouds generated by the fire (such as at 1934 UTC).

1-minute GOES-19 True Color RGB images, from 1630-2129 UTC on 10 May [click to play MP4 animation]

The fire continued to flare up again on the following day (below) — with the most of the smoke drifting to the north-northwest. By the end of the day on 11 May, the burned area had increased to 11090 acres.

1-minute GOES-19 GeoColor RGB images with an overlay of NGFS Fire Detection polygons and Surface Observations, from 1200-2249 UTC on 11 May [click to play MP4 animation]

Categories: Fire detection, GOES-19, NGFS, Red-Green-Blue (RGB) images