DESCRIPTIVE TEXT NARRATIVE FOR SMOKE/DUST OBSERVED IN SATELLITE IMAGERY
THROUGH 0245Z JULY 25, 2008
Impact of the Northern and Central California fires: Wildfires in northern and central California are combining to produce an extremely dense area of smoke over the Sacramento Valley and the Shasta/Siskiyou region. The extremely dense smoke was seen drifting mostly northeast into south central Oregon and northwestern Nevada. Also, a moderate to dense portion of this plume was seen drifting south across the Napa Valley and into the San Joaquin valley where it merged with an extremely dense area of smoke from the fire in Monterey county. A large area of lighter/thinner smoke extended east from the source fires into the Northern Plain states. Impact of the Canadian fires: A large number of presumed wildfires were located near the Great Slave Lake in the Northwest Territories and the Lake Athabasca area of northern Alberta/Saskatchewan. These fires were combining to produce an extremely dense smoke plume that was seen drifting southeast through the northern half of Saskatchewan and most of Manitoba and was beginning to move into the Northern Plains and western Great Lake region. The extremely dense and thickest portion of the plume appeared to extend towards the Lake Winnipeg area. From there the plume still featured mostly dense to extremely dense smoke that extended into eastern North Dakota and northern Minnesota. Hanna