June 1, 2008
"You don't know what you've got....
'til its gone." -- Joni Mitchell
King Kong is gone. So may be a lot of old film. LA's air quality (see www.earthcam.com - Los Angeles) has been marred today by a big backlot fire at Universal Studios in Hollywood ( LA Times has a photo essay). Reports are still coming in, but the word is that the King Kong exhibit was totally destroyed.
We also found out what it is like today not to have MODISToday or our UWisconsin MODIS direct broadcast. As of 5 pm, none of the images from today's MODIS Terra and Aqua passes have posted. According to our friends at UW, the MODIS folks are having trouble with Direct Broadcast today. Good luck getting it fixed soon!
Rapidfire is not showing any fire activity in the LA area and the smoke doesn't show well against the bright LA reflectance.
Over the rest of the country (bottom), AIRNow is showing that there are a few moderate patches of particulate pollution, but overall the air quality in the US (both particulate and ozone) is pretty good.
"You can't always get what you want...but if you try sometimes...you get what you need!" Thankfully, Direct Broadcast is still working with the Aqua satellite -- so we do have Aqua true (and false) colour imagery on the SSEC MODIS Today site:
Posted by: Scott Bachmeier at June 1, 2008 10:51 PM