Honey Prairie and Pains Bay Fires from Space {Photo of the Day}

Fires currently burning in eastern Georgia and eastern North Carolina  were caught by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard NASA’s Aqua satellite on May 9 at 18:35 UTC (2:35 p.m. EDT).

Clicking on the image will present a much larger version, which has small little red squares which designate the various fires visible in the photo.

The main fires are located in the top right hand corner, in Pains Bay fire in Dare County, North Carolina, with a long plume of spoke stretching southwest out over the Atlantic Ocean.

Farther south, at the bottom of the image, is the Honey Prairie Fire, which continues to sweep through the Okefenokee Swamp, southeastern Georgia. (There’s another fire down the bottom of Florida.)

The Pains Bay fire is believed to have been started by lightning strikes in the wetlands located to the south of U.S. Highway 264, just south of Stump Point. By May 7, the fire had grown to over 15,000 acres, and is currently being managed jointly by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the N.C. Forest Service.

The Honey Prairie fire had already burned some 72,000 acres by May 9, and was moving closer to Florida as it burned. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge web page, the Okefenokee Swamp’s water levels were much lower than in 2007, providing much more fuel for the fire.

Source: NASA Goddard

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