Satellite Captures Wildfire Aftermath in Orange County

The charred areas include Chino Hills State Park to the north and Cleveland National Forest to the southeast | h/t to Gary Robbins at OC Register's Sciencedude Blog for photo lead

This is what 30,000 acres of land scorched by fire looks like, as seen by NASA's Advanced Land Imager (ALI) on NASA’s Earth Observing-1 satellite. The Freeway Complex Fire (also called referred to as the Triangle Complex Fire), destroyed 187 homes earlier this month.

A few days after the fires, NASA also released satellite photos of the unhealthy smoke that covered the Los Angeles region which prompted daily air quality warnings (also see satellite photos of the October wildfires).

NASA's Terra satellite was useful in helping find fire burned areas that were vulnerable to rain-drive mudslides and debris flow last week when heavy rain struck the area.