{"id":26369,"date":"2017-12-17T23:59:48","date_gmt":"2017-12-17T23:59:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/?p=26369"},"modified":"2017-12-19T02:49:33","modified_gmt":"2017-12-19T02:49:33","slug":"day-14-of-the-thomas-fire-in-southern-california","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/archives\/26369","title":{"rendered":"Day 14 of the Thomas Fire in Southern California"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"GOES-15<\/a>

05-17 December GOES-15 Shortwave Infrared (3.9 \u00b5m) images, with surface station identifiers plotted in yellow and State Highway 101 plotted in cyan [click to play MP4 animation]<\/p><\/div>The Thomas Fire (InciWeb<\/strong><\/a> | Wikipedia<\/strong><\/a>) began to burn around 0226 UTC on 05 December 2017 (or 6:26 PM Pacific time on 04 December). By 17 December, the fire had burned 270,000 acres — the third largest wildfire on record in California — and caused 1 fatality. An animation of GOES-15 (GOES-West)<\/em> Shortwave Infrared (3.9 \u00b5m) images (above)<\/strong> <\/em>showed the evolution of the thermal signature (or “hot spots”, as depicted by darker black to yellow to red pixels)<\/em> during the 0200 UTC 05 December to 0215 UTC 18 December time period. Besides the largest Thomas Fire, other smaller and more short-lived fires could also be seen — especially early in the period, when the Santa Ana winds were strongest (05-07 December blog post<\/strong><\/a>). Thick clouds moving over the region later in the period either attenuated or completely masked the thermal signatures, even though the fire was ongoing.<\/p>\n

GOES-16 began transmitting imagery (from its GOES-East position at 75.2\u00ba W) at 1630 UTC on 14 December<\/strong><\/a> — a comparison of GOES-15 and GOES-16 Shortwave Infrared (3.9 \u00b5m) during the 14-17 December period (below)<\/strong> <\/em>showed that in spite of the larger GOES-16 satellite view angle (62.6\u00ba, vs 43.2\u00ba for GOES-15),<\/em> the improved spatial resolution (2 km vs 4 km at satellite sub-point)<\/em> and improved temporal resolution (images every 5 minutes, with no 30-minute gaps due to Full Disk scans)<\/em> provided a more accurate depiction of the fire trends and intensities.<\/p>\n

\"GOES-15<\/a>

GOES-15 (left) and GOES-16 (right) Shortwave Infrared (3.9 \u00b5m) images [click to play MP4 animation]<\/p><\/div>In a comparison of 250-meter resolution Terra MODIS true-color and false-color Red-Green-Blue (RGB) images (source<\/strong><\/a>) at 1853 UTC on 17 December (below),<\/strong><\/em> minimal amounts of smoke and a lack of clouds allowed a good view of the large Thomas Fire burn scar (darker shades of reddish-brown)<\/em> on the false-color image.<\/p>\n

\"Terra<\/a>

Terra MODIS true-color and false-color RGB images on 17 December [click to enlarge]<\/p><\/div>During the first full day of the fires on 05 December, a toggle between comparable Aqua MODIS true-color and false-color images (source<\/strong><\/a>) revealed very thick smoke plumes drifting southwestward over the adjacent offshore waters of the Pacific Ocean (below)<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"Aqua<\/a>

Aqua MODIS true-color and false-color RGB images on 05 December [click to enlarge]<\/p><\/div>A toggle between 05 December Aqua MODIS and 17 December Terra MODIS false-color images (below)<\/strong><\/em> showed the northward and northwestward growth of the Thomas Fire burn scar.<\/p>\n

\"Aqua<\/a>

Aqua MODIS (05 December) and Terra MODIS (17 December) false-color RGB images [click to enlarge]<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Thomas Fire (InciWeb | Wikipedia) began to burn around 0226 UTC on 05 December 2017 (or 6:26 PM Pacific time on 04 December). By 17 December, the fire had burned 270,000 acres — the third largest wildfire on record in California — and caused 1 fatality. An animation of GOES-15 (GOES-West) Shortwave Infrared (3.9 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":26371,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[70,6,43,74,12,45,71],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aqua","category-fire-detection","category-goes-15","category-goes-16","category-modis","category-redgreenblue-rgb-images","category-terra"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26369","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=26369"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26369\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26415,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26369\/revisions\/26415"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}