Wildfire case: Thunder Bay 36 — who could actually see the fire?
What this means operationally
Continuity through smoke is physics
Radar wavelengths pass through smoke and cloud. During the exact days a fire is exploding — when aircraft are grounded and optical satellites see only the plume — radar keeps returning full-coverage imagery of the fire zone. On this fire: three full passes in the first three weeks, each ~98-99% coverage.
It complements, not replaces
Thermal hotspot feeds (VIIRS/MODIS — the FIRMS data we validate against) detect active burning in near-real-time. Radar's 12-day-class revisit cannot compete on alerting — its role is imaging the ground state when nothing optical can, and confirming burn extent as passes accumulate.
What we can and cannot map — measured, not assumed
Our structural burn-mapping method is validated on a Mediterranean crown fire (burn area resolved ~2 days post-ignition vs 17 for optical). We tested the same method on THIS fire's boreal fuels — and it did not discriminate the burn. We publish that negative. Boreal burn mapping is likely an L-band problem; the new NASA-ISRO NISAR mission provides exactly that data, and wiring it is in progress.
The ask we make of fire agencies
Not a product claim — a validation partnership: your perimeter ground truth, our radar processing, this season's fires, and a joint, publishable answer to what radar can and cannot map in your fuels. The through-smoke continuity is available from day one either way.