Massive Nevada wildfire erupts like a volcano in video from 23,000 miles above Earth

A wind-driven wildfire in Nevada produced enough smoke and heat to show up on satellite this week.

A brief but remarkable video recorded by NOAA shows the fire’s smoke bursting forth like an angry volcano — or a festering pimple, depending on your mindset.

It’s a view taken from a dizzying 23,000 miles up and includes a hint of red flames at the point or origin. The spew of thick smoke is seen headed east on the wind.

The video, shared Wednesday on Twitter, lasts just four seconds and was recorded by the Goes17 satellite, part of a fleet of weather satellites set in a synchronized orbit around the Earth, NOAA says.

The wind-driven fire was first reported Tuesday and was only 5% contained at the time the image was captured, the Bureau of Land Management reported Thursday.

It was spread across 18,000 acres at the time, officials said.

NOAA satellite’s have a history of capturing surprising images.

On July 1, a satellite recorded images of a “red lake” in Iran, a environmental phenomenon caused “Dunaliella salina algae, which produce a form of beta-carotene pigment.”

A day later, NOAA shared a satellite photo taken over Africa that caught the massive tanned cloud of Saharan dust that encircled the world.

This story was originally published July 9, 2020 at 10:36 AM with the headline "Massive Nevada wildfire erupts like a volcano in video from 23,000 miles above Earth."