Day started with blissful Hawaiian dresses and flowers and turned out to be one of the most adventurous days of my visit in the Hawaiian island, Maui. As wind gusts rocked the cars in traffic, I witnessed a brush fire that spread all across the mountains and burnt around 500 acres in a span of a few hours. After a long ordeal of four hours in traffic, so grateful to be back in the hotel with food and water. Fires, still flaming!
Hawaii, a land of waves and volcanoes is also home to wildfires and brush fires that occur due to natural or human activities.
The brush fire on December 27, 2020 started around 5.30 pm, Hawaiian Standard Time (HST) (https://www.kitv.com/story/43102416/maui-red-cross-opens-shelter-in-olowalu-area) and spread across the mountains along the Lahaina-Kihei highway. Traffic came to a stand still as everyone watched the fires light up the mountains and the trees near the road on fire in awe. As the fires spread on the windward and leeward side of the mountains, the smoke drastically reduced the visibility.
I got curious if that was captured from space :) Well, wearing a Pollyanna attitude here 😉
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| Fig 2: Graphic showing Maui island and fire spot in red (Source : Fire Information for Resource Management System, FIRMS : https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/) Fire hotspots were captured by the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument onboard the Suomi National Polar-Orbiting Partnership (Suomi NPP) spacecraft, 375m and NASA Terra/Aqua MODIS instruments. GOES-R image of the fires are not yet clear. I also quickly pulled out some Weather research and forecasting model forecast from Pacific Island Ocean Observing System.  Fig 3: WRF Forecast of wind speed from https://www.pacioos.hawaii.edu/weather/model-wind-hawaii/ (Model runs not personally evaluated) The story is still shaping up. More later, as the satellites pass over Maui in the morning. |
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