Critical fire weather conditions developed across the southern U.S. plains during the afternoon of 30 January, 2018. A 1-min mesoscale sector was requested to support NWS efforts in early detection of wildfire hotspots, as has been done in the past.
A fast-growing wildfire was captured in northern Oklahoma, shown in Fig 1 in a VIS/IR wildfire sandwich combo. This image combo includes 0.64 um VIS as the underlay with semi-transparent 3.9 um SWIR as the overlay. For the shortwave IR, only the hottest pixels are shown. The color table is made such that the user can easily adjust the range to account for changes in season and/or time of day. The image combo allows for monitoring of the hotspot and smoke plume in a single pane.
Figure 1: 30 January 2018 GOES-16 1-min VIS/IR wildfire sandwich combo. Full res
Bill Line, NWS
Satellite Liaison Blog 
