| 1996 Nov 12 20:29 UT |
This image was aquired by NOAA 14 at 20:29 UT over the western U.S.
This was a daytime pass, and shows much of the southwest
well.
Map of the pass
Channel 2 view of the data
White areas are clouds.
Readers new to this site are directed to the
introduction and
description of the maps.
Bright spots were seen in the channel 3 images of a number of
states: northeast Oregon, northern Idaho, western Montana,
northern and southern California, northeastern Wyoming in the Black Hills,
Arizona, and New Mexico. Several bright spots were also visible in
northern Baja California. It was not determined that all these were
fires, some appear to be as shown below.
Arizona
Channel 3 image (784 Kb)
This daytime view in channel 3 shows a cluster of bright spots in
east central Arizona, along the southern edge of the Colorado
Plateau. A small bright spot is visible on the west side of the
Kaibab Plateau on the north side of the Grand Canyon, and another
on the Hualapai Indian Reservation on the south side of the
Grand Canyon. These bright spots were not seen on the last pass
of this area at 09:01 UT by NOAA-14.
Hot spot finder map (966 Kb)
This map shows the locations of the detected hot spots.
Not all of the spots
were intense enough to be detected, better results are obtained for
night time passes.
Hot spot map (966 Kb)
This map shows the locations in more detail.
3 channel color composite (830 Kb)
This image shows small smoke plumes for at least some of the hot
spots visible in the channel 3 image, indicating that they are real fires.
Snow is visible on some of the higer elevations and shows up yellow with
this color combination. A few yellow clouds are seen just east of the
Grand Canyon, these may be jet contrails.
New Mexico
Channel 3 image (1026 Kb)
Only a few bright spots are visible, widely scattered and tiny.
This image is included since I spent a year at the Solar Observatory
at Sunspot, just due west of the small bright spot in south central
New Mexico. The dark area to the west of this spot is the Sacramento
Montains, the
Sacramento Peak Solar Observatory is located on the
west edge of these mountains.
3 channel
color composite (840 Kb)
This shows a nearly clear day except for the very eastern edge
of the state. No smoke plumes are seen so the scattered bright
spots cannot be verified as fires for sure from this image.
Snow shows as yellow in the northern mountains. Clouds appear
yellow in the north eastern and eastern part of the state and
White Sands appears as a pale yellow area just north of
the western tip of Texas.
