DESCRIPTIVE TEXT NARRATIVE FOR SMOKE/DUST OBSERVED IN SATELLITE IMAGERY
THROUGH 0115Z April 15, 2007
Southeastern Mexico/Central America/Southwestern and Central Gulf of Mexico: A tremendous number of fires were detected across southeastern Mexico including the Yucatan Peninsula as well as portions of Central America. The most active concentration of smoke producing fires were noted over northern and central Guatemala with other significant batches over the western portion of the Yucatan Peninsula and also over eastern Honduras. The fires in northern and central Guatemala were emitting moderately dense to locally dense smoke plumes which appeared to combine into a larger area of smoke that moved into the southern Yucatan Peninsula prior to sunset. Details concerning the smoke over land in other regions of Mexico and Central America were hindered by the presence of patchy cloudiness. However, large masses of mainly thin smoke, likely produced yesterday by fires in Mexico and Central America, was visible moving to the northeast over the southwestern and Central Gulf of Mexico as well as the western portion of the Caribbean Sea. The smoke in the central Gulf of Mexico was spreading to the northeast along and ahead of a surface frontal boundary associated with a deep upper level trof across the central and eastern US. Florida: A rather large fire in northwestern Broward County of southern Florida was producing a moderately dense to locally dense smoke plume which spread generally in a northward direction into southern Palm Beach County. North Dakota/Minnesota/South Central Canada: Scattered fires primarily across northeastern North Dakota, northwestern Minnesota, and southern Manitoba Province of south central Canada were observed during the afternoon. Several of these fires were emitting mainly thin puffs of smoke. The most significant smoke plume of thin to moderate density was observed moving to the south from a fire close to the Kittson/Marshall County border region of extreme northwestern Minnesota. JS