Tuesday, February 8, 2011

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

 


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.