WoW! I Didn't Know It Was That Big!

I was going to talk about some of the floats from Saturday's parade but I misplaced my camera cord, so I hope to find that later today. In the meantime, I heard something on the radio about forest fires happening in various places around the country.  They talked about a couple of fires in the lower 48 but they stated the fires in Alaska are the worst of the current fire season.

  They stated that over 5 million acres have burned in Alaska.  5 million acres!   I suddenly realized, I had no real idea how big an area 5 million acres is.  Do you?  I understand that its a huge number and all but what does it mean when expressed in a way I can comprehend.  The announcer went on to say that it was about the size of Massachusetts. 

That still didn't quite give me a real idea of size so  I did a quick conversion of acres to square miles and found out its an area of just over 7,800 square miles that  has burned so far.  That is just under three times the distance from New York City to Los Angeles, or almost three one way trips between the two cities.  That gives me a better idea because I've driven from the west coast to the east coast and back several times. 

Yes, I know a square mile is not the same as the miles calculated on the road but if you laid the square miles end to end and drove through the middle of it, its close.