These images show forest fires raging in Montana and Hurricane Hector swirling in the Pacific. In the left image, huge smoke plumes rise from devastating wildfires in the Bitterroot Mountain Range near the Montana-Idaho border. Flathead Lake is near the upper left, and the Great Salt Lake is at the bottom right.
Smoke accumulating in the canyons and plains is also visible.
The wide extent of the smoke is evident from comparison with the image on the right, a view of Hurricane Hector acquired from MISR's nadir-viewing camera. The storm was beginning to weaken, and 24 hours later the National Weather Service downgraded Hector from a hurricane to a tropical storm. MISR, built and managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, is one of several Earth-observing instruments aboard Terra, which was launched in December 1999. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.