Smoke from the largest Minnesota wildfire since 1918 drifted southward into the skies of northern Illinois yesterday. The Pagami Creek wildfire was sparked by lightning back in August. The image above of the large plume of smoke comes from NASA's Aqua satellite. The broader view below is a visible satellite image which shows the plume drifting from Minnesota, through Wisconsin all the way south to our area.
The fire has blackened more than 100,000 acres. Campers were escorted safely from the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness as the fire raged. On Tuesday firefighters reported the fire had more than tripled in size since Sunday. Residents of southeast Wisconsin reported ash being deposited on cars and visibilities here were reduced to 4 miles because of the smoke.
The fire has surpassed the Ham Lake fire of 2007, which burned nearly 40,000 acres in Minnesota and just under 40,000 acres in Ontario. More than 156 square miles or more thand doulbe the land areof Duluth has already burned.
The Pagami Creek fire is just south of an area of blowndown trees. Those trees were felled in a ferocious windstorm that hit the region back on July 4, 1999. The derecho began in North Dakota and swept through northern Minnesota and eventually southern Canada. Millions of trees were toppled by the storm. If the fire should reach the blowndown trees, according to fire officials, it will "go up like a box of matches."
The photo above is from Minnesota Public Radio News. They have a gallery of spectacular photos of the fire.
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