History shows that when wildfires get out of hand, they can be costly and deadly to people nearby. Monitoring Real-Time Forest Fires with MODIS and VIIRS As you can see below, here is a satellite view of the December 2017 wildfires in California. If you downloaded the correct date and time, you should be able to see the forest fire. Finally, drag and drop the Landsat image into Google Earth Pro without any extra processing. The image type you want is Landsat Look with Geographic Reference (about 10MB). If you want to see a snapshot of the fire, your best chance is to use a Landsat scene from the USGS Earth Explorer.įortunately, we have a tutorial on how to download Landsat data. As you can see above, the latest forest fires will pop up with fire symbols. Next, drag and drop the KMZ into Google Earth Pro. But really, all it takes is a bit of legwork to get started.įirst, download the latest active fire data from NASA. Even though the imagery is usually less than a year old, chances are that you won’t see a forest fire in the application. And the best part is that it’s never a cloudy day.

Google Earth Pro is a handy tool that helps you sight-see the planet.

Google earth real time view