
The Aqua satellite happened to capture a picture of the Lolo Complex fires at exactly the same moment they “blew up in perfect conditions,” according to the Missoulian. I had to stitch together the version above from the edges of this image, and I didn’t bother to do any spherical correction or anything, so you may notice a few weird artifacts. The 22-mile Canyon Ferry Lake in the lower right corner can be used for scale.
The professionals finally got around to cleaning up the same image: http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/imagery/single.cgi?image=UnitedStates.A2013231.2100.250m.jpg