{"id":14600,"date":"2013-12-17T23:59:09","date_gmt":"2013-12-17T23:59:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/?p=14600"},"modified":"2013-12-18T02:43:24","modified_gmt":"2013-12-18T02:43:24","slug":"pfeiffer-fire-in-california","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/archives\/14600","title":{"rendered":"Pfeiffer Fire in California"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"GOES-15<\/a>

GOES-15 3.9 \u00c2\u00b5m shortwave IR images (click to play animation)<\/p><\/div>\n

The Pfeiffer Fire (InciWeb<\/a> <\/strong>| Wildfire Today<\/a><\/strong>) began to burn in the Big Sur area of central California just after 08:00 UTC or Midnight local time on 16 December 2013<\/strong><\/a>. McIDAS images of 4-km resolution GOES-15 3.9 \u00c2\u00b5m shortwave IR data (above; click image to play animation)<\/strong><\/em> showed the initial appearance of a fire “hot spot” (darker black to red color enhancement)<\/em> at 08:11 UTC<\/strong><\/a> or 12:11 AM local time, with IR brightness temperatures increasing to 339.3 K or 66.2\u00c2\u00ba C (red color enhancement)<\/em> at 10:15 UTC<\/strong><\/a> or 2:15 AM local time. Although the fire hot spot was generally identifiable during most of the following 48 hours (even through cirrus cloud features passing overhead),<\/em> it never was seen to reach that early intensity again.<\/p>\n

Spatial resolution is very important for the accurate location and characterization of fires — this is demonstrated by an AWIPS image comparison of 1-km resolution Suomi NPP VIIRS 3.74 \u00c2\u00b5m and 4-km resolution GOES-15 3.9 \u00c2\u00b5m shortwave IR data just after 10 UTC on 17 December (below)<\/strong><\/em>. The warmest IR brightness temperature on the GOES-15 image was 15\u00c2\u00ba C<\/strong> (darker black pixels)<\/em> compared to 54.5\u00c2\u00ba C<\/strong> (red pixels)<\/em> on the VIIRS image.<\/p>\n

\"Suomi<\/a>

Suomi NPP VIIRS 3.74 \u00c2\u00b5m and GOES-15 3.9 \u00c2\u00b5m shortwave IR images<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Suomi<\/a>

Suomi NPP VIIRS 3.74 \u00c2\u00b5m shortwave IR images<\/p><\/div>\n

The growth of the fire from 16 December to 17 December could be seen by comparing night-time images of Suomi NPP VIIRS 3.74 \u00c2\u00b5m shortwave IR data (above)<\/strong><\/em> and the corresponding VIIRS 0.7 \u00c2\u00b5m Day\/Night Band data (below)<\/strong><\/em>. Signatures of the fire — both the size of the fire hot spot on the shortwave IR images, and the bright glow from the fire complex on the Day\/Night Band images — were seen to increase in size on 17 December. The fire was estimated to have burned about 500 acres by the afternoon of 17 December, and was only 5% contained at that time. A number of homes and other structures were lsot to the fire, and some evacuations had to be carried out.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

On the 17 December VIIRS images, note the observation of smoke on the surface report for Monterey (station identifier KMRY)<\/em> north of the Pfeiffer Fire. At that time, the surface visibility there was only being reduced to 10 statute miles — however, later in the day on 17 December the surface visibility was as low as 4 statute miles at 23 UTC (3 PM local time)<\/em> and 00 UTC (4 PM local time),<\/em> causing some air quality problems.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Pfeiffer Fire (InciWeb | Wildfire Today) began to burn in the Big Sur area of central California just after 08:00 UTC or Midnight local time on 16 December 2013. McIDAS images of 4-km resolution GOES-15 3.9 \u00c2\u00b5m shortwave IR data (above; click image to play animation) showed the initial appearance of a fire “hot […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":14605,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,6,43,49,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-air-quality","category-fire-detection","category-goes-15","category-suomi_npp","category-viirs"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14600"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14600\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14606,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14600\/revisions\/14606"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}