July 31, 2018 – Editor’s note: Updates on the now 44,123-acre Perry Fire can be found here.
The Perry Fire was one of 98 large, active wildfires burning in the United States on July 30, 2018. While this fire north of Reno, Nevada, was not the largest or most destructive, the position of its smoke plume on July 29 allowed for a clear look at the burned area from space.
On that day, the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8. The images are based on observations of shortwave infrared and green light (bands 6-5-3). The brighter image was acquired at 11:38 a.m. local time.
The darker image shows shortwave infrared light from the fire at night (10:43 p.m.). Notice how the front of the fire has moved toward the southeast.
NASA Earth Observatory images by Joshua Stevens, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey. Text by Kathryn Hansen.