Northern California Wildfires - A Satellite View
Created by Roger Edwards, Storm Prediction Center
On August 18, 1996, several dozen big wildfires were each burning from 40,000 to over 100,000 acres in the West. In this GOES-8 visible satellite image, the smoke plumes from the northern California blazes stand out well. The Fork Fire plume, which extended east-northeastward over 400 miles across northern Nevada, originated from a 45,000 acre blaze near Upper Lake. Smoke from ten smaller fires, close to Stanislaus forest and Yosemite NP, congealed into the southeastern plume. Upper air maps showed 40-50 knot west-southwest flow along the track of the Fork Fire plume, and 20-40 knots with the Stanislaus/Yosemite plume. (Fire locations/sizes from Reuters)
Previous Cool Images from SPC
::::: Hurricane Opal (1995) near peak intensity
:::::
::::: Hurricane Bertha (1996) north of Puerto Rico :::::
::::: Isolated Supercell associated with Hurricane Bertha :::::
::::: Convectively Induced Vort Max Indicated by Radar :::::
