English: After a snow-filled winter and a wet spring, fire season in the Pacific Northwest was slow to spark up in 2023. Often starting as early as May, the start of the fire season was delayed until July in Oregon after abnormally high temperatures in June helped dry out flammable vegetation. With much of the Pacific Northwest now experiencing drought conditions, numerous fires are burning across several states.

On August 15, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite acquired a true-color image of smoke and fire in Oregon.

In this image, at least three red “hot spots”, each indicating actively burning fire, can be seen clustered in the Cascade Mountains. Heavy smoke covers the landscape around the hot spots, obscuring the land beneath from view. Several additional hot spots are barely visible through the smoke, indicating more than three fires are actively contributing to the smoke. A long, thin river of smoke stretches across Oregon and over the Pacific Ocean, but the source is not easy to discern.

According to the State of Oregon Wildfire Dashboard, on August 16 there were 24 active wildfires across the state, with 65,447.6 acres burned. So far, the fires have claimed no lives but accounted for 43 injuries. Most of these injuries were due to the Flat Fire, which started south of Agness, Oregon, near Oak Flat Campground on July 15. As of August 16, it had burnt 33,895 acres and was only 58 percent contained.