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Friday, November 14, 2008

Infrared imagery of Montecito's Tea fire

A screen grab from the Infrared Imagery

Robert, in a comment on our earlier thread, "Map of Tea Fire From Television", said:
I just posted this morning's thermal IR imagery- http://www.fireimaging.com/homepage.html
Thanks Robert. For those not familiar with infrared imagery, it is not exactly a map, but is a plot of heat detected this morning by sensors on an aircraft. Trained infrared interpreters can take this imagery and draw the perimeter of the fire on a map.

The resolution of the "map" is not great but you can almost see where houses are in the Santa Barbara and Montecito areas.

Very cool. Thanks Robert.

2 comments:

Adam said...

I would love to see some from the first night. I am assuming that the light areas are likely burned but out, but it would be great to know for sure.

Bill said...

Yes, the lighter colored area on the imagery is the area that burned. It is unusual for LA City or LA County to get infrared imagery, while it is common for the state and federal agencies to order it up on large fires. This is an LA City & County fire. The U.S. Forest Service has dedicated infrared aircraft that are based at Salt Lake City. I believe this imagery was taken by a California based USFS aircraft that uses a different, experimental system than the dedicated aircraft at Salt Lake City.

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