Image: Blanket of smoke from Northern California fires

NASA's Terra satellite saw a blanket of smoke over northern California from five large fires burning in the region.

The River Complex, Route Complex, South Complex, Fork Complex and Mad River Complex fires are raging over a large area of the Shasta-Trinity National Forest, located west of Redding, California. To the north is the Nickowitz Wildfire and Gasquet Complex Wildfire, just south of the Oregon state line.

InciWeb is an interagency all-risk incident information management system that coordinates with federal, state and local agencies to manage wildfires. For updates on all fires, visit the Inciweb website: inciweb.nwcg.gov.

This satellite image shows the large plume of smoke from the various fires on August 17, 2015. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument that flies onboard NASA's Aqua satellite captured an image of smoke from these fires August 17. The multiple red pixels are heat signatures (red) detected by MODIS. The smoke appears to be a light brown color.