New satellite photos of California's wildfires show the furious, deadly evolution of the disasters from space
As of Monday, California was dealing with three major wildfires. The Camp Fire is located about 80 miles north of Sacramento, while the Woolsey Fire and smaller Hill Fire are outside Los Angeles.
On Thursday, dry, warm winds — including gusts of about 50 mph — blew through northern California. Climate change is drying out more vegetation in the region, increasing the risk that spreading embers will grow into larger blazes.
Source: Business Insider
The gusts helped spread the Camp Fire. As of Monday, that fast-burning blaze had burned more than 6,400 homes, making it the most destructive wildfire in California history.
Sources: Business Insider, CalFire
The Camp Fire grew at a rate of about 80 football fields per minute. This breakneck expansion pushed the blaze into the town of Paradise, which had a population of about 27,000.
Sources: Insider, Forbes, US Census Bureau
DigitalGlobe took this regional photo on Friday using its WorldView-3 satellite. By recording infrared light, the satellite's view can penetrate thick smoke and detect fires.
Healthy vegetation is shown in blue, active fires glow, and scorched areas look yellow-green and yellow-orange. The town of Paradise is in flames to the left in this picture.
Here's a close-up view of Paradise as seen from space in September.
This WorldView-3 image shows the same view of Paradise on Friday, in flames.
The entire town was leveled in a day, and the fire has killed at least 29 people. This makes the Camp Fire as deadly as the Griffith Park Fire of 1933, which was previously considered California's deadliest wildfire ever.
Sources: Business Insider, LA Times
As the Camp Fire raged, the Hill and Woolsey fires also grew, You can see those fires outside of Los Angeles in this satellite image from Saturday.
All three wildfires covered most of California in a haze of smoke over the weekend.
As of Monday morning, the Woolsey Fire had scorched about 92,000 acres of land. This view shows the Malibu area on Sunday.
Source: CalFire
WorldView-3's infrared camera peered through the smoke in the mountains to show this view of the fires on the same day.
Here's Point Dume in Malibu in February 2018 — before the Woolsey Fire.
By Sunday, the wildfire had torn through canyons in the beach community, burning homes and killing two people in a car. The blaze sent many celebrities fleeing and torched some of their houses.
As of Monday morning, the Woolsey Fire was about 20% contained and the Camp Fire was about 25% contained. The Hill Fire was about 80% contained.
Sources: Business Insider, CalFire (1, 2), Ventura County Emergency Information
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