Fire moves toward Hay River in the Northwest Territories of Canada
Today’s Image of the Day from NASA Earth Observatory features a large forest fire in the South Slave region of Canada. At the time this photo was captured, the fire was spreading northeast toward Hay River – a town of about 3,000 people.
Hay River is in the Northwest Territories, located on the south shore of Great Slave Lake, at the mouth of the Hay River. It is the second-largest town in the Northwest Territories, after Yellowknife, and serves as a transportation hub for the region, with a major port and an airport.
“Since May 2023, large clusters of wildland fires burned in several parts of Canada. Months later, the extreme fire activity shows few signs of letting up,” said NASA.
“On August 24, 2023, the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre (CIFFC) reported that more than 600 fires were out of control, with especially large numbers of wildfires burning in Yukon, British Columbia, and the Northwest Territories.”
By June, Canada had exceeded its record for the largest area burned by wildfires in a single year. According to NASA, more than 36.8 million acres had burned as of August 25, seven times the 25-year average.
The image was captured by the Operational Land Imager-2 (OLI) on Landsat 9 on August 24.
Image Credit: NASA Earth Observatory
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