English: Wildfires in the southeastern United States are usually small and do not produce much smoke compared to the big blazes in the western United States, Canada, or Russia. But a cluster of fires in Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Kentucky in November 2016 defied that trend.

On November 7, 2016, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument on NASA’s Terra satellite acquired this true-color image of thick plumes of smoke streaming from forests in the southern Appalachians. Extreme drought fueled the outbreak of fires, and strong winds spread smoke broadly across the Southeast.

The ongoing—and in some areas record-breaking—drought began in May 2016 and intensified throughout the summer. By November, data from the U.S. Drought Monitor showed exceptional drought—the highest level on the scale—across parts of Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, and North Carolina. All of the American Southeast, except for coastal areas, faced at least moderate drought.