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Fires Dot the Middle and Eastern United States

fires in the Eastern U.S.
Fires both wild and prescribed dot the landscape of the southeastern, middle and eastern portion of the United States.

Fires both wild and prescribed dot the landscape of the southeastern, middle and eastern portion of the United States. Wildfires are those that occur naturally usually lit by lightning strikes or are set by careless humans or by arson. Prescribed fires are those deliberately set by land management authorities to take out underlying brush and dead grass so that in the event of a wildfire there is not sufficient fuel for that fire to spread too far. The National Interagency Fire Center reports daily on the fires that have broken out, fires that are prescribed, and fires that are ongoing. The report for each day can be found here: https://gacc.nifc.gov/sacc/predictive/intelligence/SACCMorningReport.pdf This report also has information about the daily fire weather outlook in the areas overseen by the Southern Area Coordination Center. The SACC predicts that the western areas of Oklahoma/Texas will remain in a more fire weather critical and high fire potential environment through March.

Per today’s report (March 6, 2017):

  • Fires that have broken out recently (known as Initial Attack Activity): 172 fires for 3,766 acres
  • Ongoing Uncontained Large Fires: 17 fires for 21,913 acres
  • Other Fires reported through alternate channels: 73 fires for 900 acres in AL, GA, KY & MS
  • Prescribed Fire Activity: State and/or Federal Lands – 101 prescribed fires for 15,723 acres in AL, KY, MS, NC & SC

The bulk of the fires seen in this image taken by NASA’s Suomi NPP satellite using the VIIRS (Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite) instrument on March 03, 2017 appear to be prescribed fires. Actively burning areas, detected by MODIS’s thermal bands, are outlined in red and when combined with smoke are indicative of fire. Suomi NPP is managed by NASA and NOAA.
NASA image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz LANCE/EOSDIS MODIS Rapid Response Team, GSFC. Caption by Lynn Jenner with information from the National Interagency Fire Center’s Southern Area Coordination Center.