Hot, dry, and windy conditions exacerbated the spread of wildfires across the states of Arizona, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico in early July 2026. The image above was acquired by the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument on the Suomi National Polar orbiting Partnership (Suomi NPP) satellite on July 1. True-color corrected reflectance data is overlaid with the fires and thermal anomalies layer, where each red dot represents the center of a 375-meter pixel that has been identified as a thermal anomaly (usually fire). In the scene:
- The Pocket Fire is burning north of Sedona, Arizona; by the early afternoon of July 2, 20,680 acres had burned and the fire was 21% contained.
- The Babylon Fire in Utah began on June 26 and by the afternoon of July 2 had burned 79,795 acres and was 0% contained.
- Three large fires are visible in Colorado, all of which were 0% contained on July 2. From west to east, the Ferris Fire began on June 27 due to lightning has burned 27,382 acres. The Gold Mountain Fire has burned 18,005 acres, and the Aspen Acres Fire has burned 47,953 acres.
- The Sacaton Fire in New Mexico started on June 21 due to lightning and has burned 1,279 acres. It was 0% contained on July 2.
All of the fire reports come from the InciWeb interagency all-risk incident information management system.
To find more NASA remote sensing data related to the fires, visit the Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS) U.S./Canada web map.