Posted on 09/02/2009 9:15:35 AM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
NASA's Terra satellite has captured a dramatic image of the Los Angeles "Station Fire" wildfire. It is one of at least seven conflagrations currently affecting California, which by yesterday had reportedly laid waste to over 133,000 acres and consumed 80 buildings.
NASA explains: "The area covered by the image is 245 kilometers (152 miles) wide. Several pyrocumulus clouds, created by the Station Fire, are visible above the smoke plumes rising from the San Gabriel Mountains north of Los Angeles in the left-center of the image.
"Smoke from the Station Fire is seen covering the interior valleys along the south side of the San Gabriel Mountains, along with parts of the City of Los Angeles and Orange County, and can be seen drifting for hundreds of kilometers to the east over the Mojave Desert."
The Station Fire is described as "the most intense wildfire" the authorities have faced in a decade. It alone has already accounted for 120,000 acres and 70 buildings and continues to menace the hills along the northern edge of Los Angeles. Firefighters say it could take up to two weeks to completely control the blaze. ®
PING
fyi
Wow! Thanks for posting that.
Damn. those fires are puffing out some crud..
For some reason, the smoke from the fire looks like a skull and cross bones. /random
beautiful day, no smog, cannot see any homes - and people say we impact the planet.
Nasa page:
And detail:
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This image was acquired mid-morning on Aug. 30 by the backward (northward)-viewing camera of the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) instrument on NASA's Terra satellite.
People say this is “close” to LA, but how close is it really....fringes of the northern suburbs are probably 50 miles from the city center?
I wonder if it is going to burn all the way to the 215.
Damn. those fires are puffing out some crud..””
Yeah- and only last week, the enviro nuts wanted “romantic candle light dinners” banned because they create too much global warming.
Boffins: Give up on CO2 cuts, only geoengineering can work
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Ordinary eco-efforts a foolish distraction
Top British climate boffins have said that the only practical hope for arresting global warming is the use of "geoengineering" - techniques intended to reduce the effects of CO2 emissions, as opposed to reducing the CO2 emissions themselves.
The scientists add that not only are large emissions cuts politically and diplomatically unfeasible, but that geoengineering would actually be cheaper and easier.
bookmark
Well , out here some say Palm Springs is close to Los Angeles...but it can be several hours driving time to Santa Monica on the ocean Beach.
Well there’s your problem. The whole place is brown for miles around, (no, I don’t mean Mexicans).
Where I live, it’s green. Green stuff doesn’t burn like that.
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On the night of August 30-31, 2009, the Station Fire north of the city of Los Angeles spread in three directions and doubled in size, according to the Los Angeles Times. Two fire fighters had been killed and at least at least 18 homes in Tujunga Canyon had burned as of the morning of August 31. According to the Incident Information System, the Station Fire covered 85,760 acres as of the morning of August 31, 2009.
The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this true-color image around 11:45 a.m. local time (18:45 UTC) on August 30, 2009. Red outlines indicate hotspots of anomalously high surface temperatures associated with wildfires. In this image, the hotspots remain west of Mt. Wilson. The site of critical communication centers, Mt. Wilson had not burned but was threatened by the fire as of August 31, according to the Los Angeles Times. Smoke from the fire blows toward the northeast in this image. Clouds, perhaps mixed with some smoke, linger over Los Angeles.
NASA image by Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team, Goddard Space Flight Center. The Rapid Response Team provides daily images of this area. Caption by Michon Scott.
Looks like a westcoast version of Woodstock.
Rove! - you magnificent bastard!
Why hasn’t Obama done something!!!!! This is a natural disaster far worse than Katrina and OBAMA IS ON VACATION!!!!!!!! - He wants to KILL US ALL!!!
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Wildfires raged in Los Angeles County on August 29, 2009. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this true-color image around 11:00 a.m. local time (18:00 UTC) the same day. The red outline is a hotspot where MODIS has detected unusually warm surface temperatures consistent with wildfires. Smoke blows north from the hotspot. Acquired near the edge of the satellite swath, this image appears slightly blurrier than would an image acquired by a satellite directly overhead.
According to an August 29 report from California’s Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, three fires burned in Los Angeles County that day. Near the city of Los Angeles, the Station fire was 0 percent contained, affected 5,000 acres, and threatened 1,800 residences. East of that wildfire was the Morris fire, which was 85 percent contained, affected 2,168 acres, and threatened 15 residences.
Another fire, the PV fire, occurred along the coastline (not shown in this image). Affecting 230 acres and damaging 5 residences, that fire was 90 percent contained at the time of the bulletin.
NASA image courtesy MODIS Rapid Response Team, Goddard Space Flight Center. The Rapid Response Team provides daily images of this area. Caption by Michon Scott.
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Fires in Los Angeles County 2 Wildfires burned north of the city of Los Angeles County on August 29, 2009. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this true-color image around 2:20 p.m. local time (21:20 UTC) the same day. Red outlines show hotspots where MODIS detected high surface temperatures associated with fires, and the hotspots roughly correspond with fires described by California’s Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. A department bulletin, issued August 30, 2009, stated that the Station fire was 5 percent contained, affected 35,200 acres, had destroyed 3 residences, and threatened 10,000 more. As of August 30, the Morris fire, affecting 2,168 acres, was 95 percent contained. Smoke from both fires blows northward from the flames, away from the metropolis of Los Angeles, and east of the deep green agricultural fields of California’s Central Valley.
NASA image by Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team, Goddard Space Flight Center. The Rapid Response Team provides daily images of this area. Caption by Michon Scott.
It is a vast area in the large image.
I see you, ping
Oh my that is quite a photo!
Thanks!
From Civic Center to where the fire originated was 13 miles!~
Wow. That actually is close....scary.
The fire is about 10 miles from the Rose Bowl in Pasadena so maybe 30 niles from downtown LA
Here’s a time-lapse video that really shows how big the fire is.
http://www.brandonriza.com/Video/HTML/ZeroPercentContained.html
The weather channel had some interesting photos of unusual cloud formations over the fire.....but I am not finding them on their website.
Was looking here:
In the montage below, 8/28/09 is missing because clouds partially obscured the scene. It was subjectively similar to the 8/27/09 image.
The amazing thing is that there was a whole separate fire to the southeast of Mt. Wilson on 8/26/09, which was evidently extinguished very quickly. To me, it looks like the one which had its image from the LA area widely distributed. Anyway, it makes for a confusing time line, and raises a lot of questions, in my mind.
Also to me, it looks like the crisis passed on 8/31/09.
Good work...
I have no idea how you did that...
But I can see them with my Linux Mint system.
Firefighters wage 5-day battle to save Mt. Wilson Observatory
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September 3, 2009
It was near midnight Monday, and Larry Peabody looked toward a leading flank of the giant Station fire as it advanced over a ridge in the Angeles National Forest, marching toward the Mt. Wilson Observatory.
"We can't stop the head of the fire," said Peabody, a fuels battalion chief for the U.S. Forest Service, as he stood in the darkness on the bottom of Mt. Wilson Road, a narrow switchback off the Angeles Crest Highway that is the only paved road into and out of the peak-hugging observatory compound.
The battle for Mt. Wilson was fully engaged.
To one side of the firefighters were multiplying ranks of snarling flames that already had turned miles of centuries-old trees to charcoal. To the other side were a hundred years of astronomical history and hundreds of millions of dollars in communications towers, treasures to the city below.
Los Angeles fire map: Mt. Wilson, Tujunga, Acton, Altadena, Pasadena, Sierra Madre
Says the danger has passed for Mt Wilson....
That might have been the Morris fire...it is shown on the Fire map ...see just above.
Nite!
It seems as though the fire lingered on the north side of the mountain, and threatened to burn back up the north slope. Today's image ( 09/02/09 ) shows that there's very little wind, and my projective algorithm locates Mt. Wilson right in a hot spot! Maybe this is due to the backfires they set, assuming my placement is correct. The latest says that they did fend off the fire.
The way I comprehend the news is that it is based on official bulletins. These placed Mt. Wilson in jeopardy, and they never issued an "all clear", so the media just stuck with the jeopardy angle, and ignored the actual dynamics of the fire. Anyway, I'm just glad the observatory does seem to have survived.
Thank you nice pic
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