DESCRIPTIVE TEXT NARRATIVE FOR SMOKE/DUST OBSERVED IN SATELLITE IMAGERY
THROUGH 1530Z June 06, 2006.
Alaska/Western Canada: Clouds have spread over the large fire in the Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge in SW Alaska which is inhibiting smoke detection in the vicinity of this fire. Clouds are also covering northern Saskatchewan Province of western Canada. However, outside of the cloudiness affecting Alaska and western Canada, early morning GOES-West imagery depicts relatively thin bands of smoke which extend from eastern Alaska across northwestern Canada between Great Bear Lake and Great Slave Lake of the Northwestern Territories. Another very long swath of what is likely relatively thin detached smoke stretches from central British Columbia Province of southwestern Canada to central Saskatchewan Province of west central Canada. The source regions of these detached areas of smoke are likely from recent large fires burning in Russia as well as the southwestern Alaskan fire in the Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge and the fires in northern Saskatchewan. Central US: Early morning GOES-West imagery showed a rather thick batch of concentrated haze which covered eastern Nebraska, much of Iowa, southeastern Minnesota, and northern Missouri. A definitive determination of smoke content in this batch of concentrated haze could not be made based on the locations of yesterday's fires and resultant movement of the smoke plumes. Southern/Southeastern US/Gulf of Mexico: Moderate haze was evident using a combination of GOES-West and GOES-East early morning visible imagery across the region including much of Texas and Louisiana, a good portion of the Gulf of Mexico and Florida. A very small amount of smoke may exist within this area although a definite connection to a particular source is not possible. A few fires yesterday in southern Louisiana were emitting smoke plumes which were spreading southward into the western Gulf of Mexico, while at least one fire in Florida was producing some smoke. The fires across Mexico and Central America are no where near as prominent as a couple of weeks ago so any smoke contribution from them well up over the Gulf of Mexico and the Southern US should be relatively minor. Eastern Canada: The fire over eastern Quebec Province of eastern Canada was still producing moderate to locally dense smoke this morning which was moving mostly in a southeastward direction. Some of the detached smoke from this fire had spread across the Gulf of St. Lawrence and Newfoundland Island. JS