MIAMI – You may have seen the pictures or heard the grave stories coming out of Australia as wildfires continue to rage.
As of Jan. 7, reports that nearly 20 million acres have been burned across the country. That equates to more than 30,000 square feet burned.
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To put that into perspective, that amount of land would encompass nearly half the state of Florida, stretching from Ocala and Palm Coast all the way down to Cape Coral and Boca Raton. For more context, the devastating wildfires in Florida in 1998 burned approximately 500,000 acres.
NASA satellites have captured just how dire the situation has become over the last several weeks.
Our @NASAEarth Aqua satellite took this natural-color image of southeastern Australia on Jan. 4 showing smoke from wildfires. Some white patches above the smoke are likely to be pyrocumulonimbus clouds created by convection and heat rising from a fire: https://t.co/vRl5k66wX2 pic.twitter.com/9YaoXRoxX0
— NASA (@NASA) January 6, 2020