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Alaska’s Active Fires

Image: NASA
Image: NASA

Alaska set a depressing record on June 15, when officials said that over 1 million acres had already burned. That’s the earliest point in Alaska’s wildfire season that that marker has ever been reached. This Landsat image of south-central Alaska, taken June 10, shows plumes of smoke from some of the dozens of active fires that were burning at the time. By the end of July, fires had burned more than 3 million acres across the state—the annual average is just 1.1 million acres—driven by unusually dry and hot temperatures.

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