DESCRIPTIVE TEXT NARRATIVE FOR SMOKE/DUST OBSERVED IN SATELLITE IMAGERY
THROUGH 1700Z October 18, 2017
SMOKE Far Northwestern Gulf of Mexico/Southeastern Texas/Western Louisiana... At least a couple of fires along the southeastern Texas coast continued to burn overnight resulting in a sizable area of mainly thin density smoke which spread inland over a portion of southeastern Texas with another patch along the Texas-Louisiana border. Smaller areas of moderately dense to locally thick smoke were located closer to the actual fires. Northern and Central California... Compared to the past week or so, the visible smoke over northern and central California was quite a bit less this morning though cloudiness offshore and over southern California did interfere with smoke detection in satellite imagery. Several relatively small areas of thin to locally moderately dense smoke could be seen over portions of northern and central California. DUST Leeward Islands and the Atlantic north and east of there... A broad region of Saharan dust was visible covering much of the Leeward Islands with the western edge very close to the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. The dust extended out over the open Atlantic well to the north and east of these islands. JS THIS TEXT PRODUCT IS PRIMARILY INTENDED TO DESCRIBE SIGNIFICANT AREAS OF SMOKE ASSOCIATED WITH ACTIVE FIRES AND SMOKE WHICH HAS BECOME DETACHED FROM THE FIRES AND DRIFTED SOME DISTANCE AWAY FROM THE SOURCE FIRE. TYPICALLY OVER THE COURSE OF ONE OR MORE DAYS. AREAS OF BLOWING DUST ARE ALSO DESCRIBED. USERS ARE ENCOURAGED TO VIEW A GRAPHIC DEPICTION OF THESE AND OTHER PLUMES WHICH ARE LESS EXTENSIVE AND STILL ATTACHED TO THE SOURCE FIRE IN VARIOUS GRAPHIC FORMATS ON OUR WEB SITE: JPEG: http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/Products/land/hms.html GIS: http://www.firedetect.noaa.gov/viewer.htm KML: http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/PS/FIRE/kml.html ANY QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS REGARDING THIS PRODUCT SHOULD BE SENT TO SSDFireTeam@noaa.gov