Scorched Earth

(CBS/John Filo)

Hari Sreenivasan is a CBS News correspondent based in Dallas.

I started last week in Kansas where a part of the sky came down to meet the earth. This week, I'm here on the border between Georgia and Florida, where fires from the earth seem to be reaching up to meet the sky. The smoke from these fires that have already burned more than 230,000 acres is already visible from space, but today these fires are getting extra fuel in the form of high winds.

These fires aren't as spectacular as the ones you see from Catalina Island in California, with expensive yachts in the foreground or the now-famous heat of the flames nearing the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, but they are destructive and still not completely under control.

(AP Photo/Steve Cannon)

There are three things that lead to the strength or weakness of a fire: the fuel, the topography of the land and the weather. These fires have plenty of fuel in the trees - they may look green but you have to measure 20 inches underground to get a good idea of how dry this region was left without last year's hurricanes. The topography is mostly flat and not as much of a factor, but the weather is not cooperating. A combination of winds is creating conditions where the flames could reach 80-100 feet high in some places today.

As the winds push east, the firefighters plan to take a stand before the flames reach Fargo, a town with 200 homes and 300 residents.

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