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Fires in Montana and Alberta

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2024-07-27 12:00:00
July 27, 2003

Fast-moving forest fires continued to race through terrain at the front range of the Rocky Mountains in northern Montana (bottom right) and Alberta, Canada (top right), on July 27, 2003. In Montana, the fires (marked in red) forced thousands of tourists and staff to evacuate Glacier National Park (image center) late last week, while in Canada, the blaze forced many residents of the small community of Hillcrest to evacuate their homes on Sunday, as the fire, moving through the nearby forest at almost 27 meters per minute (89 feet per minute), doubled in size to 70 square kilometers (17,297 acres). This image of the fires was captured on Sunday, July 27, 2003, by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on the Aqua satellite. Active fire detections made by MODIS are marked in red.

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Image courtesy Jacques Descloitres, MODIS Rapid Response Team at NASA GSFC

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