California Wildfires: The View From Space
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MIAMI (CBSMiami) – Destructive and dangerous wildfires continue to race across Southern California Friday with new blazes prompting more evacuations.
Six large wildfires have scorched nearly 160,000 acres in the state this week and at least 5,700 firefighters are working to contain the towering walls of flames.
Those flames are so large, the astronauts on board the International Space Station can see them.
NASA released some new images Friday of what the fires look like from space while the ISS crew is in low Earth orbit.
NASA astronaut Randy Bresnik photographed the plumes of smoke on Dec. 5, and shared the images with his followers on social media, writing, "Thank you to all the first responders, firefighters, and citizens willing to help fight these California wildfires."
There were other images released as well taken from a NASA aircraft while it was on a test flight from roughly 65,000 feet in the air.
A Multi Spectral Imager on the European Space Agency's Sentinel-2 satellite images of the burn scar in Ventura County, California. Active fires appear orange; the burn scar is brown. Unburned vegetation is green; developed areas are gray. The Sentinel-2 image is based on observations of visible, shortwave infrared, and near infrared light.
Powerful Santa Ana winds are fanning the flames.