The massive scale of the wildfires devastating southern California has been made clear by these new satellite images from NASA.

This first image shows smoke from at least 14 separate fires ranging from north of Los Angeles to south of San Diego.

Fuelled by strong winds, the fires grew rapidly, as shown in these two images. The one on the left shows the situation at 11.35 on October 21 while the right image shows the same area at 14.50 on the same day, just over three hours later. See the NY Times for more on the importance of the local Santa Ana winds. For other wind stories see Charlie Petit’s run down.

AP has an overview of the fires and both the LA Times and the San Diego Union Tribune have a huge amount of space dedicated to this story.

Images: NASA