DESCRIPTIVE TEXT NARRATIVE FOR SMOKE/DUST OBSERVED IN SATELLITE IMAGERY
THROUGH 0215Z May 8, 2013
Gulf of Mexico: A large area of thin to moderately dense smoke from Central American, Mexican, and Cuban agricultural burning covered the western/central Gulf of Mexico, western Caribbean, and Central America this morning and persisted throughout the evening. Clouds covered some of the area believed to contain smoke in the Bay of Campeche. North Central US: The northern midwest states including the Dakotas, Minnesota, Iowa, and Nebraska are encompassed in a broad area of remnant thin density smoke from several agricultural burns in the said areas. Pacific Northwest: Thin density remnant smoke covers Northern Oregon, Washington, northern Idaho and Montana, and southern British Columbia as a result of numerous wildfires burning primarily in northern Idaho. The fires currently have new, attached plumes as of sunset, but the remnant smoke area is comprised of days old smoke. Dust: A large area of trans-Pacific Asian dust is observed moving east covering all of British Columbia except the southern quarter, most of the central parts of Alberta and Saskatchewan, and the northern half of Manitoba, through sunset. Ramirez THIS TEXT PRODUCT IS PRIMARILY INTENDED TO DESCRIBE SIGNIFICANT AREAS OF 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