Texas Panhandle Firestorm in the Satellite Age
Satellite image of the burn scar left on the Texas Panhandle landscape captured on March 2, 2024, by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer on NASA’s Terra satellite.Ranchers in the Texas Panhandle recently faced a fire that charred more than 1 million acres.The Texas Panhandle is a sparsely populated region of rolling hills, oil and gas wells, and grazing lands. By some estimates, 85 percent of the 12 million cattle raised in Texas live on ranches in the Panhandle.Following a period of record winter heat, a…