DESCRIPTIVE TEXT NARRATIVE FOR SMOKE/DUST OBSERVED IN SATELLITE IMAGERY
THROUGH 0145Z March 12, 2011
South Central and Southeastern US: Once again, many fires were analyzed across the region stretching from the Central and Southern Plains eastward across the Southeastern US. The big story of the day was the significant number of fires across central and eastern Oklahoma that were emitting narrow smoke plumes which were quickly being blown off to the north-northeast. The moderately dense to even locally dense smoke from these fires as well as a couple of fires over north central Texas combined to form a larger mass of smoke during the late afternoon and early evening which covered a good portion of central and eastern Oklahoma extending into southeastern Kansas and far southwestern Missouri. In other areas, a few moderately dense to locally dense smoke plumes were detected over north central Louisiana, west central Arkansas, and southeastern Texas. The smoke plumes associated with the fires in the Southeast were relatively small and of thin density, although there were a couple of somewhat larger more dense ones in the western Florida panhandle. JS Earlier this morning... Eastern Texas: Two rather large areas of light, remnant smoke can be seen in this morning's visible satellite imagery across portions of southeastern Texas/extreme southwest Louisiana and then up into northeastern Texas. There were a numerous amount of fires with smoke yesterday and into last night through the southern and central plains and with High pressure centered over the Gulf Coast, smoke can be seen moving around the High and back northward through the plains during the day. Belge 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. THE SMOKE TEXT PRODUCT IN GENERAL SHOULD BE SENT TO SSDFireTeam@noaa.gov ANY QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS REGARDING THESE CHANGES OR THE SMOKE TEXT PRODUCT IN GENERAL SHOULD BE SENT TO SSDFireTeam@noaa.gov