Fire and frost hit the Upper Midwest

In September of 2011, the Pagami Creek Fire burned over 92,000 acres in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW) of the Superior National Forest, Minnesota Much of this burned at high severity, as indicated on the October forest change image. This was the largest fire to occur in this area since the 1999 blowdown event. The less extreme forest change shown in yellow and orange across northern Wisconsin and Michigan is largely the result of a hard early frost that accelerated the end of the growing season.