Ohio tire fire, Aug 21, 1999


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This is a NOAA-12 color composite image of 3 AVHRR channels acquired on Aug 21, 1999 at 7:59 AM EDT Saturday morning. The NOAA-12 weather satellite was passing from north to south about 520 miles over western Illinois when it acquired this early morning view of the fire (see pass map (on the pass map the red line is sunrise, the shades of purple to the left is twilight)). Three of the 5 AVHRR channels, 1, 2, and 4, were colored red, green, and blue respectively. Channel 1 views visible light, channel 2 views near infrared where vegetation is highly reflective, and channel 4 views thermal infrared. This is not a true color image (only one of the 5 AVHRR channels is in the visible, so true color images are not possible with this instrument), but vegetation still shows as green. Clouds appear bright yellow in the eastern part of the image (the higher clouds cast shadows on the ground and lower clouds below), and fog is slightly paler yellow and fills river valleys along the south and eastern sections.

This image shows a large dark smoke plume in central Ohio state. The source of the smoke is a fire in a tire dump at the north end of the plume. The length of the smoke plume, from the fire to the southernmost smoke visible on this image is about 100 miles. The smoke is dark in all the channels used in this image. The tire dump is a 110-acre site near the village of Sycamore, and contains up to 20 million scrap tires.1

Besides the smoke, clouds, and fog, this image also shows several small lakes (intense blue) and numerous cities and towns (dark gray patches). Western Lake Erie is seen at the top of the image with the city of Toledo at its western point.

Reference:
1 Mary Beth Lane, "Fiery tire dump has long history of EPA violations," The Columbus Dispatch, Monday, Aug. 23, 1999.

Ray Sterner

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