DESCRIPTIVE TEXT NARRATIVE FOR SMOKE/DUST OBSERVED IN SATELLITE IMAGERY
THROUGH 0100Z February 9, 2011
Smoke: SE Florida into N Bahamas: Thin smoke from numerous fires around Lake Okeechobee and northward across Central Florida has moved SE covering much of the SE tip across Palm Beach and Broward counties reaching across the Gulf Stream into the far E tip of Grand Bahama to Bimini toward Andros Island across the NW Grand Banks of the Bahamas. Dust and Sand: Upper Rio Grande Valley: A very large and cold upper level system is swinging through the Central and Southern Rockies bringing extremely cold air in the lowest levels of the atmosphere surging southward across the Front Ranges of New Mexico and Western Texas. As such winds behind the front are very strong and are mixing sand/soil/dust particles into the air covering much of SE NM and SW Tx panhandle into the Northern portions of the Western Texas panhandle as well. This combined with strong westerlies aloft coming off the higher terrain/plateau of SE Arizona, SW New Mexico and Northern Chihauhua has lead to very dense sand storm across much of the described areas. Sources of the sand dust from the Plateau Region are usually salt flats such as the large one near Cochise in SW AZ and numerous flats across N Chihuahua (including Laguna de Guzman). The area covered includes: West as far as Cochise county, AZ... as far south as Jeff Davis county in TX,... as far East as Howard and Glasscock counties in TX, and Northern boundary from N Grant county to Roosevelt county NM. SW Arizona: Thin sand and dust from Yuma, La Paz into Maricopa counties is blowing east across AZ and SE across the dry deserts of Western Sonora into the northern extents of the Sea of Cortez. This area extends only into Maricopa and Pinal and is much less significant than that described above. Gallina 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. THE SMOKE TEXT PRODUCT IN GENERAL SHOULD BE SENT TO SSDFireTeam@noaa.gov ANY QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS REGARDING THESE CHANGES OR THE SMOKE TEXT PRODUCT IN GENERAL SHOULD BE SENT TO SSDFireTeam@noaa.gov