If you've traveled on Route 29 in Virginia south of Charlottesville recently, you may have noticed a distinct smell of smoke. That's most likely because there's a forest fire on Mt. Heard. I drove by there yesterday and for a good five miles, visibility was down (like a light fog) and smoke could be smelled. At one point, I could see a orangish glow above some of the hills west of the road. It was a little eerie, to say the least.
Of course, I didn't know it was a forest fire until I came home and did some research on the 'net. To my delight, there are all kinds of resources available showing the satellite imagery of forest fires, allowing you to look for fires in your area based on your longitude and latitude, and many other cool tricks. Unfortunately, there's a lot of data out there right now due to the dryness of the season.
Following are some pages I found.
- Virginia Department of Forestry: Fire Situation Reports
- Information about current fires burning in Virginia. Also includes statistical information, including acreage burned, homes damaged, and homes saved. According to the Media Briefing Notes for November 21, 2001, the fire on Mt. Heard is under control after burning some 1,100 acres of Virginia forest.
- NIFC: Current Wildland Fire Information
- Various fire resources, including statistics, image galleries, and fire maps.
- USGS: GeoMAC Wildland Fire Support
- Interactive maps providing satellite pinpointing of forest fires. Use the
Wildland Fire Maps
link in thePublic Servers
section to access the maps. The maps include information about the size of fires and allow you to pinpoint them using landmarks such as cities and major roads. - NOAA OSEI: Fire Events
- Satellite imagery positioning fires burning all over the world. Also includes links to various other event pages, including current, volcano, and hurricane events. The Unique Events page is quite neat, as well.
- GOES-8 Satellite Wildfire ABBA
- Satellite imagery of the Midwest and Ohio Valley region, including information about current fires in that area. Imagery of other areas is also available from this page.
- NASA Earth Observatory Global Fire Monitoring
- Good source of information about monitoring forest fires.
