DESCRIPTIVE TEXT NARRATIVE FOR SMOKE/DUST OBSERVED IN SATELLITE IMAGERY
THROUGH 0202Z August 10, 2011
Far Eastern US/Western Atlantic: Little change from morning's discussion as large area of unknown aerosols continues to spread eastward across the western Atlantic. A portion of this plume of unknown aerosols is getting mixed with smoke from the Lateral West fire that continues to burn and produce heavy-dense smoke eastward across extreme portions of southeastern Virginia, northeastern North Carolina and offshore of the Mid-Atlantic coastline. Western and Northwestern Canada: An area of remnant smoke, likely from several fires burning across northern Alberta is moving toward the south-southeast across portions of eastern Alberta, Saskatchewan, western Manitoba provinces. Northwestern Mexico: An area of unknown aerosols is seen moving northward across Baja and Gulf of California. Warren Previous Discussion from this morning: Far Eastern US/Western Atlantic: A large amount of aerosol of unknown origin and composition could be seen along most of the eastern US seaboard spreading east across the western Atlantic. Most of this aerosol is believed to be general pollutants. However, the Lateral West fire in the Great Dismal Swamp along the Virginia-North Carolina border was producing moderately dense to dense smoke. Most of this smoke had moved east over the Atlantic but a windshift this morning briefly allowed for smoke to flow northward across the Delmarva Peninsula. A small patch of remnant smoke from fires in southern Georgia yesterday could also be seen this morning along the FL/GA border. Central US/Great Lakes Region: An area of aerosol believed to be thin remnant smoke stretched across the Central Plains from South Dakota/Nebraska to southern Lake Michigan with other patches of thin smoke over Lake Superior and Lake Huron into southern Ontario. A strong upper low moving across western Ontario appears to have pulled this remnant smoke either southeastward from the northwest Canada wildfires or eastward across the Rockies from the Pacific Northwest fires. Oklahoma and Texas Panhandles/Western Kansas/Southeast Colorado: Two small areas of thin remnant smoke were present over the panhandles of OK/TX, western KS, and southeast CO. It is believed this smoke is from the fires in NM/AZ and western CO yesterday. Western and Northwestern Canada: Several fires were analyzed over far northern Alberta and in the Northwest Territories of northwestern Canada mainly to the east of Great Slave Lake. Some of these fires could be seen producing smoke already this morning and two fairly large areas of thin remnant smoke believed to be from the above mentioned fires covered much of Alberta/Saskatchewan and parts of Manitoba/Northwest Territories/western Nunavut. Moderately dense smoke was present across northern Saskatchewan. Sheffler 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