Fires create their own weather

One of the fires I've been asked to map is the Columbia Complex east of Walla Walla, WA. Just last year, a 50,000-acre fire (the School Fire) burned in the same area. I made a field visit to that area and spent a few days hiking up and down the Blue Mountains sampling the burn scar. This fire this year is burning up to and around last year's burn scar. There was a Landsat 7 SLC-Off image acquisition yesterday, which we ordered and got this morning. The fire is still very active, so we wouldn't typically purchase this scene. However, I got a call from the Forest yesterday asking for anything of the fire. They hope to do some burnout operations in the Wilderness Area and may face litigation due to this decision. In an effort to provide some sort of idea what the burn out may do, they wanted me to map severity on the fire up to date so they could say, "Look, here's what the fire has done so far and what we can anticipate if we do this burn out on the Wilderness."

However, I'm not sure yesterday's Landsat image acquisition will provide much good information. The fire spit up two large pyro-cumulus clouds yesterday and was very active. Large portions of the fire were obscured by smoke and the clouds it created. I'll see what I can do, but I'm not holding my breath. Take a look at yesterday's image.