The winds have shifted and the Slide Fire smoke that once hung heavy and gray over Flagstaff is now covering the city of Sedona in Arizona. Over 20,000 acres have burned in the Coconino Forest in Arizona. Inciweb.org reports that during Memorial Day crews completed the final perimeter burnout around the fire. This perimeter created by the fire crews is approximately 40 miles of line to form a containment perimeter around the fire. The fire is considered 35 percent contained at this point.
Today (Tuesday May 27) crews will work on holding the containment line along the west edge of the fire and burn out patches of unburned land within the fire line. Crews will burn land in a more controlled manner in an effort to able to influence the ultimate outcome. No threats to the fire line are anticipated today.
Weather conditions continue to warm and dry out as the high pressure ridge intensifies into Wednesday. Two Remote Automated Weather Stations were installed to provide additional weather data for fire managers to help them understand weather conditions and their impact on the fire itself.
NASA's Terra satellite collected this natural-color image with the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, MODIS, instrument on May 27, 2014. Actively burning areas, detected by MODIS's thermal bands, are outlined in red. NASA image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz LANCE/EOSDIS MODIS Rapid Response Team, GSFC. Caption by Lynn Jenner with information from Inciweb.org .