DESCRIPTIVE TEXT NARRATIVE FOR SMOKE/DUST OBSERVED IN SATELLITE IMAGERY
THROUGH 0300Z June 16, 2010
Alaska/Yukon Territory/Northwest Territories/Nunavut: Clouds cover a large portion of Alaska, the eastern Northwest Territories and Nunavut. A break in the cloudiness over Yukon and western Northwest Territories showed remnant smoke over south central Yukon Territory stretching eastward to Great Slave Lake. There is likely other smoke mixed in with the clouds, especially further to the east. Washington: An area of thin smoke has continued to rotate through the Pacific Northwest into southwest Canada. At sunset the smoke extended from southwest Oregon northeast through eastern Washington, southeast British Columbia and southwest Alberta. This smoke can be traced back to fires in NE AK and Yukon earlier this week. Desert Southwest: Numerous agricultural fires south of the Salton Sea in southern California produced small puffs of thin smoke which have merged together with smoke from a wildfire in northern Baja and moved to the northeast into southwest Arizona. N US Great Plains/Manitoba/Ontario: The massive amount of smoke from numerous wildfires burning in northern Saskatchewan and southeast Northwest Territories has continued to drift to the south and east. The southern extent is being drawn south by a large cyclonic circulation over the western Great Lakes and covers much of the Dakotas and is wrapping into western Iowa. The smoke is thin to moderately dense. A separate patch of smoke was near the center of the cyclone along the central Minnesota/Wisconsin border area. Moderately dense to dense smoke covered much of eastern Saskatchewan and western Manitoba. Quebec/SE Ontario/New England: Numerous large fires across the forests of central Quebec near Lac Mistassini and near Nemiscau produced dense plumes that extended to the southeast reaching the St Lawrence Valley. At sunset the smoke plumes that were attached to the fires were mostly dense. There were also patches of remnant smoke that have become detached from the fires and were seen drifting across Maine and the Gulf of Maine to south of Nova Scotia. A separate patch of light smoke was drifting south over southern Quebec and had reached just west of Montreal. Please see graphic below for smoke from fires in New Mexico and SE Arizona...as smoke remains attached to their source fires. Ruminski THE FORMAT OF THIS TEXT PRODUCT IS BEING MODIFIED. IT WILL NO LONGER DESCRIBE THE VARIOUS PLUMES THAT ARE ASSOCIATED WITH ACTIVE FIRES. THESE PLUMES ARE DEPICTED IN VARIOUS GRAPHIC FORMATS ON OUR WEB SITE: JPEG: http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/ml/land/hms.html GIS: http://www.firedetect.noaa.gov/viewer.htm KML: http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/PS/FIRE/kml.html THIS TEXT PRODUCT WILL CONTINUE TO DESCRIBE SIGNIFICANT AREAS OF SMOKE WHICH HAVE BECOME DETACHED FROM AND DRIFTED SOME DISTANCE AWAY FROM THE SOURCE FIRE, TYPICALLY OVER THE COURSE OF ONE OR MORE DAYS. IT WILL ALSO STILL INCLUDE DESCRIPTIONS OF BLOWING DUST. ANY QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS REGARDING THESE CHANGES OR THE SMOKE TEXT PRODUCT IN GENERAL SHOULD BE SENT TO SSDFireTeam@noaa.gov