Satellite images reveal the devastation of the California fires

Days after deadly wildfires began sweeping through Napa Valley, DigitalGlobe, a satellite imagery company, released images taken Tuesday that reveal the damage left behind. These false color images shown below were collected using the Shortwave Infrared (SWIR) sensor on the satellite, which is able to see through the smoke of the wildfires and reveal where the fires were burning at that time.

Tubbs fire

Many homes in the Coffey Park neighborhood, located in the northwest section of Santa Rosa, were destroyed. At least 22 wildfires have broken out since Oct. 8 in California’s wine country, roaring through thousands of homes and forcing tens of thousands of residents to evacuate.

The worst fires began in Napa, Sonoma and Mendocino counties and were quickly spread by hot, gusty winds. Hundreds of thousands of acres have been charred, including several wineries.

Nuns and Norbbom fire

DigitalGlobe also released images of Napa County. Using the satellite’s Very Near Infrared sensor (VNIR), the red represents healthy vegetation and the dark gray areas are burned. There are also some areas where the underbrush burned, but the tops of the trees are still intact.

Air quality

Due to the fires, the air quality in the region is poor. Health officials are telling people who are particularly sensitive to pollution that maybe they should leave town for a while. Several schools closed on Friday.

The US Forest Service's BlueSky framework models particulate matter and smoke from wildfires and it’s 3-hour average shows how far the smoke plumes have spread.

The Air District activated a health advisory on Tuesday, warning people of “unprecedented levels of air pollution throughout the Bay Area.” Current PM2.5 levels — the particles that are especially dangerous to human health — are at the highest levels recorded since air-quality measurements began in 2009.

PM2.5 are particles in the air that are about 3 percent of the diameter of a human hair. The size is what makes them so dangerous. Because they’re so small, they can enter the lungs and even the blood stream. Air-quality forecasters are telling people to stay in buildings with filtered air. They even go so far as to recommend that sensitive populations leave the region entirely for less-affected places until the smoke subsides.