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What does it look like when 10,800 lightning strikes 367 fires in the Bay Area and further spark?
This video, compiled from more than 400 satellite images from late Saturday through Thursday morning, is the answer – a fascinating view of the latest wildfire in California from miles high in the air.
The freak lightning storms of the weekend were just the ignition. Over the next 72 hours, hundreds of fires – some of them smoldering trees deep in the forest known as ‘sleepers’ – exploded across the counties of Contra Costa, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, San Mateo, Marin, Sonoma and Napa.
The fide-time lapse compiles three separate sets of satellite images taken at 30-minute intervals, downloaded using the SLIDER tool of the Regional and Mesoscale Meteorology Branch (RAMMB) and the Cooperative Institute for Atmospheric Research at Colorado State University.
The first layer shows lightning, flying from bright light scattered over the first 36 hours. The fires begin to show in the hours following the storms in the display of ‘natural fire color’. Then you can see smoke from the fires taking over the Bay Area on Wednesday with the classic display of ‘natural color’ of satellite.
Speed up, in just one minute, see how lightning progresses to fires and then to smoke.
