DESCRIPTIVE TEXT NARRATIVE FOR SMOKE/DUST OBSERVED IN SATELLITE IMAGERY
THROUGH 0200Z July 16, 2006
California: The large fire north of Palm Springs CA has been obscured by clouds much of the day and this has precluded smoke detection with this fire. An intense, large fire in the northern portion of the Cibola National Wildlife along the Colorado river is producing dense smoke that extends to the north and west and cover most of Riverside county. Fires in western Stanislaus county are producing moderately dense smoke that is swirling over Stanislaus and adjacent counties. Fires along the Medocino/Sonoma and along the Lake/Napa county borders are producing moderately dense plumes that extend mainly to the southwest and are within about 35 km of their source. Utah: Several fires are seen burning in Utah but extensive cloud cover is precluding smoke detection this evening. Idaho: Three smoke plumes are seen in northern Idaho, 2 in northern Valley county and one in central Clearwater. The plumes are all narrow and extend to the east northeast. The plume in northwest Valley is moderately dense while the others are thin. Montana: Numerous fires are blazing in the Charles Russell National Wildlife Refuge. Collectively they are producing a large plume of dense to locally very dense smoke that is fanning out to the north and east. The smoke reaches into southwest Saskatchewan and east into northwest North Dakota. A moderately dense plume is seen coming from the Bull mountains of southern Musselshell county. The plume extends to the east northeast into northwest Rosebud county. A fire in Powder River county in the Custer National Forest is producing a thin plume of smoke drifting to the north. Wyoming: A blaze in northeast Sheridan county is producing a large plume of moderately dense to dense smoke that extends mainly to the east along the Wyoming/Montana border and reaches into western South Dakota. A fire in southeast Converse county has a moderately dense smoke plume that is fanning out with lower level smoke moving to the north and higher level smoke moving to the east across Niobara county. A fire in southern Park county in the Shoshone National Forest is producing a plume of dense to locally very dense smoke that is moving east and extends into Campbell county in northeast Wyoming. A fire in Sublette county in the Bridger-Teton National Forest near Gannett Peak is producing a narrow but dense plume of smoke that extends to the east into Fremont county. Minnesota: Several fires in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area in Cook and Lake counties are producing smoke plumes that extend to the southeast. The largest fire with the most extensive plume of dense to very dense smoke is over extreme northwest Cook county. This plume extends across most of the upper peninsula of Michigan. A fire is Roseau county has a thin plume of smoke extending to the southeast into northwest Itasca county. Arkansas: Smoke plumes are seen in central Perry and southwest Clark counties that extend to the south and southwest. The Perry county plume is the larger and more dense of the plumes and it extends into northwest Louisiana. North Carolina: A fire in southwest Carteret has produced a moderately dense plume that was moving to the southwest along the coast about 200 km to near the North Carolina/South Carolina border. Remnant smoke in the Plains: A broad area of mainly thin, but locally moderately dense, smoke from the numerous large fires of the past several days in the southwest is seen emanating from the central Rockies and extending east across Nebraska and Kansas into Missouri and Iowa, much of Illinois and into southwest Michigan. Further east it becomes too diffuse and mixes with clouds to be able to discern. The most dense area of smoke was seen extending from central Kansas across central Missouri. Ruminski