With an ongoing extreme to exceptional drought, hot temperatures (daily high temperatures along the coastal areas as high as 106º F at John Wayne Airport) combined with strong offshore Santa Ana winds (gusting as high as 87 mph at Big Black Mountain) conspired to create an environment favorable for wildfires... Read More

Strong winds helped a wildfire to spread very quickly through a portion of the city of Valparaíso, Chile — this fire forced large-scale evacuations, destroyed around 2000 homes, and was responsible for 12 fatalities. McIDAS images of 4-km resolution GOES-13 3.9 µm shortwave IR channel data (above)... Read More

Numerous grassland fires began to burn across parts of eastern Kansas (and also extreme northeastern Oklahoma) during the afternoon hours on 11 April 2014. AWIPS images of 4-km resolution GOES-13 3.9 µm shortwave IR channel data (above; click image to play animation) showed... Read More

McIDAS images of GOES-13 0.63 µm visible channel data (above; click image to play animation) showed two very large blowing dust features during the afternoon hours on 18 March 2014: one moving southward out of southeastern Colorado, and another moving eastward out of... Read More