Fires in Arizona

Twenty miles north of Tucson, Arizona, the Aspen Fire raged through the Coronado National Forest in June and July 2003. The fire began on June 17, 2003, and over the next few weeks grew to more than 40,000 acres. Hundreds of homes and businesses in communities on Mount Lemmon were burned, and hundreds of people have been evacuated from the area as fire fighters struggle to contain the blaze in difficult terrain under hot, dry, windy conditions.
In these Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) images from the Terra (top) and Aqua (bottom) satellites between mid-June and July 2003, several fires have been detected across the Southwest and are marked with red dots. The Aspen Fire, south or southwest of center in most images, has the largest smoke plume of all the fires. The grayish patch to the southwest of that fire is the city of Tucson.

Arizona is a state in the southwestern region of the United States. It is also part of the Western and the Mountain states. It is the 6th largest and the 14th most populous of the 50 states. Its capital and largest city is Phoenix. Arizona shares the Four Corners region with Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico; its other neighboring states are Nevada and California to the west and the Mexican states of Sonora and Baja California to the south and southwest.

Credit: Jacques Descloitres, MODIS Rapid Response Team, NASA/GSFC