Stunning satellite images and animations offer a sobering perspective on California's raging infernos

Data from the Landsat 8 satellite were used to create this image of the Camp Fire in Northern California on November 8, 2018, around 10:45 a.m. local time. (Source: NASA Earth Observatory) In all the many years that I've covered wildfire, I don't believe I've encountered anything like what we've seen with the Camp Fire blazing in California's northern Sierra Nevada mountains. What really shocked me was the speed with which this cataclysmic inferno progressed to become what appears to be the most destructive in state history. In a flash, an estimated 6,713 structures were destroyed in the town of Paradise. "It’s phenomenal how fast the fire spread," said Scott McLean, the deputy chief of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, quoted in the N.Y. Times. The Landsat 8 satellite image above offers an incredible view of the inferno. It was created using Landsat bands 4-3-2 — visible light — along with shortwave-infrared light to highlight active portions of the fire. The Camp Fire started around 6:30 a.m. Pacific Standard Time, and by 8:00 p.m., it had already burned 20,000 acres. As I'm writing this on the morning of Saturday, Nov. 10, the fire has consumed 100,000 acres — half the size of New York City — and is about 20 percent contained, according to the latest update from CalFire. (Access the latest CalFire info on the fire here.) To the south, the Woolsey and Hill fires are burning just west of Los Angeles. They've so far consumed about 75,000 acres. You can see smoke from these blazes, as well as the Camp Fire, in this video: https://youtu.be/o_x3-CPIGlo Smoke from the Woolsey and Hill blazes is visible toward the bottom of the frame. The Camp Fire is toward the top.  The images making up the animation were acquired by the GOES-16 weather satellite at intervals of five minutes apart on Friday, Nov. 9. I created the animation using the RealEarth data discovery and visualization platform developed by Space Science and Engineering Center and Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Next up: a static image showing all of California: