Assayii Lake Fire, New Mexico

The Assayii Lake fire ignited in northwestern New Mexico on June 13, 2014. By late morning on June 17, it had burned 12,105 acres on the Navajo Nation. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite acquired this image of the fire at 2:25 p.m. local time on June 16. The active fire area is outlined in red. It is evident from the large smoke plume that strong winds were blowing. The winds hampered fire fighting efforts throughout the day and helped the fire spread.

1. Reference

2. InciWeb (2014, June 17) Assayii Lake. Accessed June 17, 2014.

NASA image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz, LANCE/EOSDIS MODIS Rapid Response Team at NASA GSFC. Caption by Holli Riebeek.

Instrument(s): 

Aqua - MODIS - NASA