I’m not able to get the aerial infrared data sets this morning, and MODIS is still being balky [Added 0930. I was wrong. MODIS was working fine, but it didn’t find any fire overnight, which fooled me. I’ll post the map below.], but I have the new offical fire outline and the VIIRS data.
The fire outline, as of last night and the night before:
In the west we see striking growth, as we saw in the midday VIIRS images yesrerday:
In the east, the fire has also grown a great deal to the southeast:
The VIIRS data shows no new activity threatening the village of Big Sur and surronding areas:
A closer look at the western part shows the merger of the two parts of the fire continuing in the upper right of the map, and expansion towards the southeast in the lower part of the map:
Over in the Cachagua area, we see one hot spot in a formerly burned area, and some activity that shows the southeastern expansion is continuing:
MODIS didn’t find any new fire:
The orange lines are the dozer fire breaks that were in as of 7/30, plus one that I added by hand. The pink lines are the ones that were planned as of that date. The fat black lines are the outlines of the fire’s perimeter on the official Cal Fire maps from last night.
How to read the MODIS/VIIRS heat indications: The size of the square represents the nominal margin of error. The fire could be anywhere in the square, not just at the center. Dark red squares were detected less than six hours before the data set was created. Light red squares were detected less than twelve hours before the data set was created. Orange squares were detected less than 24 hours before the data set was created. Yellow squares were detected less than six days before the data set was created. When the squares overlay other objects, the color of the square changes somewhat, but the color of the dot in the middle does not. So look at the dot if you’re uncertain what color the square should be. Since the fire is now over six days old, some of the early detections have dropped off the map. MODIS makes mistakes, sometimes missing outbreaks, and sometime misplacing them outside the nominal margin of error. It is also a snapshot of the activity at the time the satellite is overhead, and will definitely miss flare ups between passes. MODIS can’t tell the difference between wildfires and intentional back burns.
Yesterday’s MODIS visible band image:
And the (false color) IR/UV image:
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