NASA Spots Argentina Fire Cloud from Space | The Weather Channel
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Argentina's devastating fire season produced one spectacular image.

BySean Breslin
January 31, 2018Updated: January 31, 2018, 12:35 pm ESTPublished: January 31, 2018, 12:35 pm EST

A pyrocumulonimbus cloud is seen over Argentina in an image acquired Jan. 29, 2018.

(NASA)

Argentina's wildfire season has – yet again – devastated thousands of square miles in forests and grasslands, marching across the landscape in unstoppable fashion.

Each year, some 12,000 wildfires are sparked across Argentina, and those infernos claim upwards of 5,000 square miles of land, according to NASA's Earth Observatory. The fires can turn deadly, and they can frequently be seen from space.

On Monday, a wildfire burning in La Pampa Province produced a pyrocumulonimbus cloud that was photographed by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Aqua satellite. Such tall clouds are created when wildfires provide the heat that rises into the atmosphere, which then cools and condenses into water vapor.

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Pyrocumulonumbus clouds are capable of producing their own precipitation and even lightning and thunder, but NASA said this particular cloud over La Pampa Province did not have enough rainfall to extinguish the fire, as satellite imagery showed it was still burning Tuesday.

Argentina's wildfires have been fueled by strong winds and intense summer heat, and in recent weeks, the blazes impacted La Pampa and western Mendoza.

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