August 19, 2020
As wildfires rage across northern California, enormous smoke plumes are smothering cities and towns in the San Joaquin Valley and San Francisco Bay area. On August 19, 2020, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this natural-color image just before noon.
The smoke has caused unhealthy breathing conditions and ash-covered cars. More than 20,000 people were ordered to evacuate some neighborhoods near the Santa Cruz Mountains.
References & Resources
- Los Angeles Times (2020, August 19) Smoke from wildfires chokes Bay Area as ozone smog threatens Southern California. Accessed August 19, 2020.
- SF Chronicle (2020, August 19) Wildfire smoke chokes Bay Area, with air quality âvery poor for the foreseeable futureâ. Accessed August 19, 2020.
NASA Earth Observatory image by Lauren Dauphin, using MODIS data from NASA EOSDIS/LANCE and GIBS/Worldview . Text by Kasha Patel.
