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March 18, 2025 - Dusty Inferno Hits Oklahoma
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An area of low pressure over the U.S. Southwest began to collide with humid air flowing north on March 14, 2025. The combination powered a destructive weather front that unleashed a chaotic weekend of winds, thunderstorms, hail, dust, and wildfires as the front pushed east through several U.S. states.
Dust streamed northeast across Texas and Oklahoma behind a line of thunderstorms when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite acquired this true-color image on March 14, 2025. Amidst the blanket of dust, smoke plumes are visible streaming from multiple wildland fires burning near several towns in Oklahoma. Larger fires are marked by a red “hot spot”, which is an area where the thermal bands on the MODIS instrument detected high temperatures typical of actively burning fires.
In Oklahoma, hurricane-force winds gusted up to 85 miles (137 kilometers) per hour, triggering a massive dust storm and fanning fast-moving grass fires that caused the state’s governor to declare a state of emergency in 12 counties. The high winds and fires damaged more than 400 homes and structures, including at least 70 homes in Stillwater that were destroyed. The extreme weather also caused tens of thousands of power outages and triggered deadly traffic accidents.
More than 170,000 acres of land burned, according to The Oklahoman. Many fires raged in parched grasslands that had been abnormally dry and drought-prone in recent weeks, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.
“Wildfires are really many hazards at once,” said Doug Morton, a remote sensing scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, citing dangers including the direct threat to life and property, health hazards posed by the smoke, and issues of visibility that make road and air travel dangerous. “In Oklahoma, the mixture of dust and smoke compounded the problem and led to treacherous conditions,” Morton said.
The same storm system generated dozens of tornadoes, some of which touched down in Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia, taking dozens of lives and flattening homes in several communities.
Image Facts
Satellite:
Aqua
Date Acquired: 3/14/2025
Resolutions:
1km (276.9 KB), 500m (634.5 KB), 250m (1.3 MB)
Bands Used: 1,4,3
Image Credit:
MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC
An area of low pressure over the U.S. Southwest began to collide with humid air flowing north on March 14, 2025. The combination powered a destructive weather front that unleashed a chaotic weekend of winds, thunderstorms, hail, dust, and wildfires as the front pushed east through several U.S. states.
Dust streamed northeast across Texas and Oklahoma behind a line of thunderstorms when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite acquired this true-color image on March 14, 2025. Amidst the blanket of dust, smoke plumes are visible streaming from multiple wildland fires burning near several towns in Oklahoma. Larger fires are marked by a red “hot spot”, which is an area where the thermal bands on the MODIS instrument detected high temperatures typical of actively burning fires.
In Oklahoma, hurricane-force winds gusted up to 85 miles (137 kilometers) per hour, triggering a massive dust storm and fanning fast-moving grass fires that caused the state’s governor to declare a state of emergency in 12 counties. The high winds and fires damaged more than 400 homes and structures, including at least 70 homes in Stillwater that were destroyed. The extreme weather also caused tens of thousands of power outages and triggered deadly traffic accidents.
More than 170,000 acres of land burned, according to The Oklahoman. Many fires raged in parched grasslands that had been abnormally dry and drought-prone in recent weeks, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.
“Wildfires are really many hazards at once,” said Doug Morton, a remote sensing scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, citing dangers including the direct threat to life and property, health hazards posed by the smoke, and issues of visibility that make road and air travel dangerous. “In Oklahoma, the mixture of dust and smoke compounded the problem and led to treacherous conditions,” Morton said.
The same storm system generated dozens of tornadoes, some of which touched down in Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia, taking dozens of lives and flattening homes in several communities.
Image Facts
Satellite:
Aqua
Date Acquired: 3/14/2025
Resolutions:
1km (276.9 KB), 500m (634.5 KB), 250m (1.3 MB)
Bands Used: 1,4,3
Image Credit:
MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC
