DESCRIPTIVE TEXT NARRATIVE FOR SMOKE/DUST OBSERVED IN SATELLITE IMAGERY
THRU 0300Z JULY 20, 2005
Alaska/Northwestern Canada: A few scattered fires were detected from central to west central Alaska with some smoke visible spreading southward from several of these fires. Abundant cloudiness still covers a good portion of Alaska today making additional fire and smoke detection difficult. Significant fires burning across northwestern Canada between Great Bear Lake and Great Slave Lake continue to produce a large quantity of smoke. Smoke during the day has moved southward now into the northern half of British Columbia and Alberta Provinces. Southeastern Canada: Only a few fires have been detected across eastern Canada today as a synoptic scale weather system has moved across the region bringing widespread cloudiness and areas of rain showers. This made it difficult to detect the presence of smoke or any of the large fires which were visible yesterday. Western U.S.: Many new fires were detected this afternoon and evening across Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana. Many of these fires had visible smoke plumes which were moving mostly off to the east. Another batch of new fires formed this evening over west central California, just east of San Francisco Bay region. Thick smoke from these fires was rapidly moving to the southeast. Evening GOES-12 Visible imagery showed a huge mass of smoke covering much of the area including eastern Nevada, southern Idaho, southwestern Wyoming, western Colorado, western New Mexico, southeastern California, and just about all of Utah and Arizona. Major fires with very thick convective looking smoke plumes were noted especially over northern Nevada, southern Utah, and central Arizona. Wisconsin: Visible imagery showed a thick black smoke plume spreading eastward from a fire reported to be at a Tire Recycling Facility in southern Wisconsin. The plume was seen moving across Lake Michigan into southwestern lower Michigan.