NASA photographs California fires

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NASA recently shared photographs of the wildfires raging in California.

Here's a rundown of the photographs shared in the video above:

1-3. The southern California wildfires could be seen by the International Space Station crew from their vantage point in low Earth orbit. NASA astronaut Randy Bresnik photographed the plumes of smoke on Dec. 5, 2017, and shared the images with his followers on social media, writing, "Thank you to all the first responders, firefighters, and citizens willing to help fight these California wildfires."
Image Credit: NASA/Randy Bresnik

4. During an engineering flight test of the Cloud-Aerosol Multi-Angle Lidar (CAMAL) instrument, a view from NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center’s ER-2 aircraft shows smoke plumes, from roughly 65,000 feet, produced by the Thomas Fire in Ventura County, California, around 1 p.m. PST on Dec. 5th, 2017. As of Dec. 6, authorities state 65,000 acres have been burned and the fire remains zero percent contained.
Image Credit: NASA/Stu Broce

5. On Dec. 5, 2017, the Multi Spectral Imager (MSI) on the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-2 satellite captured the data for a false-color image of the burn scar in Ventura County, California. Active fires appear orange; the burn scar is brown. Unburned vegetation is green; developed areas are gray. The Sentinel-2 image is based on observations of visible, shortwave infrared, and near infrared light.

The fires mainly affected a forested, hilly area north of Ventura, but flames have encroached into the northern edge of the city. On December 6, 2017, Cal Fire estimated that at least 12,000 structures were threatened by fire.

Powerful Santa Ana winds fanned the flames. Forecasters with the Los Angeles office of the National Weather Service warned that the region is in the midst of its strongest and longest Santa Ana wind event of the year. They issued red flag warnings for Los Angles and Ventura counties through December 8, noting that isolated wind gusts of 80 miles (130 kilometers) per hour are possible.

A prolonged spell of dry weather also primed the area for major fires. This week’s winds follow nine of the driest consecutive months in Southern California history, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory climatologist Bill Patzert told the Los Angeles Times. “Pile that onto the long drought of the past decade and a half, [and] we are in apocalyptic conditions,” he said.
NASA Earth Observatory images by Joshua Stevens using modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2017) processed by the European Space Agency

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