Tuesday, June 15, 2010

DESCRIPTIVE TEXT NARRATIVE FOR SMOKE/DUST OBSERVED IN SATELLITE IMAGERY
THROUGH 0300Z June 16, 2010

Alaska/Yukon Territory/Northwest Territories/Nunavut:
Clouds cover a large portion of Alaska, the eastern Northwest Territories
and Nunavut. A break in the cloudiness over Yukon and western Northwest
Territories showed remnant smoke over south central Yukon Territory
stretching eastward to Great Slave Lake. There is likely other smoke
mixed in with the clouds, especially further to the east.

Washington:
An area of thin smoke has continued to rotate through the Pacific
Northwest into southwest Canada. At sunset the smoke extended from
southwest Oregon northeast through eastern Washington, southeast British
Columbia and southwest Alberta. This smoke can be traced back to fires
in NE AK and Yukon earlier this week.

Desert Southwest:
Numerous agricultural fires south of the Salton Sea in southern California
produced small puffs of thin smoke which have merged together with
smoke from a wildfire in northern Baja and moved to the northeast into
southwest Arizona.

N US Great Plains/Manitoba/Ontario:
The massive amount of smoke from numerous wildfires burning in northern
Saskatchewan and southeast Northwest Territories has continued to drift to
the south and east. The southern extent is being drawn south by a large
cyclonic circulation over the western Great Lakes and covers much of the
Dakotas and is wrapping into western Iowa. The smoke is thin to moderately
dense. A separate patch of smoke was near the center of the cyclone
along the central Minnesota/Wisconsin border area. Moderately dense to
dense smoke covered much of eastern Saskatchewan and western Manitoba.

Quebec/SE Ontario/New England:
Numerous large fires across the forests of central Quebec near Lac
Mistassini and near Nemiscau produced dense plumes that extended to
the southeast reaching the St Lawrence Valley. At sunset the smoke
plumes that were attached to the fires were mostly dense. There were
also patches of remnant smoke that have become detached from the fires
and were seen drifting across Maine and the Gulf of Maine to south of
Nova Scotia. A separate patch of light smoke was drifting south over
southern Quebec and had reached just west of Montreal.

Please see graphic below for smoke from fires in New Mexico and SE
Arizona...as smoke remains attached to their source fires.

Ruminski

THE FORMAT OF THIS TEXT PRODUCT IS BEING MODIFIED. IT WILL NO LONGER
DESCRIBE THE VARIOUS PLUMES THAT ARE ASSOCIATED WITH ACTIVE FIRES. THESE
PLUMES ARE DEPICTED IN VARIOUS GRAPHIC FORMATS ON OUR WEB SITE:

JPEG:   http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/ml/land/hms.html
GIS:    http://www.firedetect.noaa.gov/viewer.htm
KML:    http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/PS/FIRE/kml.html

THIS TEXT PRODUCT WILL CONTINUE TO DESCRIBE SIGNIFICANT AREAS OF SMOKE
WHICH HAVE BECOME DETACHED FROM AND DRIFTED SOME DISTANCE AWAY FROM THE
SOURCE FIRE, TYPICALLY OVER THE COURSE OF ONE OR MORE DAYS. IT WILL ALSO
STILL INCLUDE DESCRIPTIONS OF BLOWING DUST.

ANY QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS REGARDING THESE CHANGES OR THE SMOKE TEXT
PRODUCT IN GENERAL SHOULD BE SENT TO SSDFireTeam@noaa.gov


 


Unless otherwise indicated:
  • Areas of smoke are analyzed using GOES-EAST and GOES-WEST Visible satellite imagery.
  • Only a general description of areas of smoke or significant smoke plumes will be analyzed.
  • A quantitative assessment of the density/amount of particulate or the vertical distribution is not included.
  • Widespread cloudiness may prevent the detection of smoke even from significant fires.