The Ranger Road Fire began in Oklahoma in the afternoon of Tuesday, February 17. The fire has since spread across the border into southern Kansas and, as of February 19, burned more than 283,000 acres.
The image comparison above shows the day the fire started, February 17, on the left "A" side. The active fire front can be seen encircling the burned area in bright red, with smoke emanating from the fire. Move the center swipe bar to the left to see by Wednesday, February 18, the burned area in brown has doubled to almost twice the size of Chicago. The fire is currently only about 15 percent contained.
The false-color corrected reflectance images were acquired by the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) aboard the joint NASA/NOAA NOAA-20 platform. The Plains have been experiencing extremely critical to elevated fire weather conditions these past few days due to dry air, high and sustained winds up to 20 mph, and dry vegetation with high burn risk.
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