Big Pic: See The Yosemite Wildfire From Space
Satellite Image of Rim Fire taken August 25, 2013 Terra/MODIS The satellite photo below was taken yesterday. The fire now threatens a dam important to the city of San Francisco's electricity supply. NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, carried on its Terra satellite, captured this image of the enormous Rim Fire in Yosemite National Park at 10:45 a.m. local time yesterday, August 25. You can see the enormous amount of smoke coming off the fire, as well as other wildfires in the state and whiter clouds in the sky. The fires themselves look like bright red markings someone made on the photo after the fact because MODIS doesn't actually "see" fires using visible light. Instead, it gathers thermal data that describes where fires are, then MODIS scientists add that data to the satellite photos, which show land, smoke and clouds. By the evening of August 25, the Rim Fire had burned 224 square...