DESCRIPTIVE TEXT NARRATIVE FOR SMOKE/DUST OBSERVED IN SATELLITE IMAGERY
THROUGH 1430Z June 27, 2011
Quebec/New York: Remnant thin to moderately dense smoke can be seen moving due east and is residual from fires in western Ontario particularly NW of Lake Nipigon over the past few days. The smoke is currently located in advance of a N-S frontal zone extending from far NE Hudson Bay and northern tip of Quebec south across Western Quebec into Eastern Ontario across central and eastern Lake Ontario into central NY mostly between Rochester and Syracuse. At the widest the plume is about 450km wide E-W at the tip of James bay into Central Quebec. North Carolina/Virginia Coast: An area of hazy conditions, likely from the culmination of pollutant aerosols and smoke from the Juniper Road fire in SE NC, can be seen over NE NC ans far SE VA and extending eastward out to sea (near small Mesoscale Convective System/Thunderstorm Cluster). South Central US Plains: A swath of moderately dense to dense smoke from the Pacheco fire in NM extends across NE NM, the OK panhandle and northern counties of OK, and southern few rows of counties in KS to the MO state line about 50-75 km south of Metro KC. Alberta/Montana/North Dakota: A large area of moderately dense smoke from northern wilderness fires around Lake Athabasca from the last few days has banked up along the eastern edge of the Rockies from the intersection of the due N-S boundary of BC/Alberta into Central MT but is now beginning to slide slowly eastward covering all of southern Alberta the northeast quarter of MT, southern quarter of Saskatchewan with a bit of the smoke being pulled SE into ND under the influence of a cyclone or shortwave over the eastern portion of the state. Northwest Territories/Wilderness of Alberta/Saskatchewan: Numerous fires along the MacKenzie River in NW Territories to the larger fires near Lake Athabasca continue to produce thin to moderately dense smoke that covers that same strip of area with it moving SE. With the larger fires near Athabasca producing much more dense smoke there is an area between cloud cover over the northern third of Saskatchewan that remains particularly dense. Manitoba/Nunavut... and Alaska?: Remnant smoke from the past week's output of the Canadian wilderness fires can be tracked as a thin smoke area in the swly flow of the large polar vortex centered over Victoria Island... this is covering NE Alberta, eastern continental Nunavut and Western Hudson Bay and is moving NNE and N around the vortex. Interestingly, satellite loops show a return flow across the pole and thin smoke can be seen moving across the Arctic Ocean into Northern Yukon Territory/N Alaska (north of the Brooks Range with a small area of NW NW Territories being affected as well as it is pulled SE toward its source again. Gallina THIS TEXT PRODUCT IS PRIMARILY INTENDED TO DESCRIBE SIGNIFICANT AREAS SMOKE ASSOCIATED WITH ACTIVE FIRES AND SMOKE WHICH HAS BECOME DETACHED FROM THE FIRES AND DRIFTED SOME DISTANCE AWAY FROM THE SOURCE FIRE..TYPICALLY OVER THE COURSE OF ONE OR MORE DAYS. AREAS OF BLOWING DUST ARE ALSO DESCRIBED. USERS ARE ENCOURAGED TO VIEW A GRAPHIC DEPICTION OF THESE AND OTHER PLUMES WHICH ARE LESS EXTENSIVE AND STILL ATTACHED TO THE SOURCE FIRE 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 ANY QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS REGARDING THIS PRODUCT SHOULD BE SENT TO SSDFireTeam@noaa.gov