| 1996 Aug 19 09:22 UT |
This image was aquired by NOAA 14 at 09:22 UT over the western U.S.
This was a night pass with partly clear conditions.
Map of the pass
Channel 3 view of the data
Black areas are clouds.
Hell's Canyon Area
The Hell's Canyon fires no longer show up
in this view. That doesn't necessarily mean they are gone
but if not they are least below the detection threshhold for this
data set. The fires southwest of Hell's Canyon also appear
reduced in this view.
Mesa Verde Area
The bright spot in the upper right quadrant is the Mesa Verde fire
in Colorado.
This is a definitely verified fire, apparently caused by
lightning. Tourists were evacuated from the mesa which contains
well known cliff dwellings.
The bright spot due south in New Mexico is not a fire. It is near
Farmington, NM and may be related to a large power plant, perhaps a large
shallow cooling pond.
22 Aug 1996, From Peggy Gaudy pgaudy@nm0151wp.nmso.nm.blm.gov
(a BLM archeologist in Farmington, NM):
"On your map the "hot" area
near Farmington is probably Morgan Lake, which like you said, is the cooling
lake for the Four Corners Power Plant."
Northern California
The satellite ground track drifts eastward each day and for this
pass the edge of the data is starting to loose western California.
Some of the fires visible yesterday are still visible in this image, but
with lower resolution (resolution drops close to the edge of the data).
Use this map to spot the smaller detected hot spots.
Note that some fires are missed because they are outside the
area covered. Look at the channel 3 image to see where.
Southern California
Fog or low clouds encroach from the sea in the southwest
part of this view. The larger fires appear reduced from yesterday's view.
Montana
This view shows a nearly clear Montana except for a few
clouds showing as black areas near the eastern corners.
No trace of yesterday's fire in the southwest part of the state
is visible on this image. This would not be surprising if it
were a grass fire. Lakes and reservoirs show up bright in this
view because they become warm in the day.
The small hot spot detected southwest of the Bighorn Mountains
(near the bottom of the map) appears to be real when examined in more detail.
Utah
This view is mostly clear except for a few areas of clouds which
appear black because they are cold and block the view of the warmer surface.
The large bright area in northern Utah is Great Salt Lake. The faint dark
horizontal line across it at about it's midpoint is a railway causeway
across the lake. The smaller lake to the southeast of Great Salt Lake
is Utah Lake. The only fire detected in this view is barely visible
on the northeast shore of the lake. Compare the relief map to this
image and note how the mountains are cooler (darker in this view).
