Satellite Views of the Florida Fires, Jul 02 1998
Click on image for full state
Morning view 7:46 AM EDT on Thursday, July 2, 1998
The images below are from a
NOAA-12 pass on the morning of Thursday,
July 2.
The color composite shows that the wind is blowing toward the
east, the fires are moving into the coastal cities of Daytona Beach
and Ormond Beach forcing tens of thousands of people to flee their homes.
The channel 3 image on the right cuts through
the smoke and shows the large extent of the fires.
The large smoke plume
These fires have created a large smoke plume out over the Atlantic. The
following views show that plume at two different scales.
Click on the images for larger views. The vertical blue band in the
water is the edge of the gulfstream. These images made the local
(Washington, D.C.) weather report with Bob Ryan on NBC Channel 4.
Afternoon view 4:11 PM EDT on Thursday, July 2, 1998
This afternoon view does not show the smoke plumes as well as the morning
view. Also more clouds interfere with the view. The channel 3 image on
right is hard to interpret since it shows not only thermal
emission but also reflected sunlight, the latter is most intense for
daytime passes. In addition channel 3 has the problem of saturating
when the temperature gets high, an ordinary hot summer day will cause
this problem. So the contrast between the fires and the surrounding land
is not very clear. What appears to be large areas of fire may partially
be the dark burned areas heated to saturation by the sun.
Back to the Summer of 1998 Florida fire image page.
