DESCRIPTIVE TEXT NARRATIVE FOR SMOKE/DUST OBSERVED IN SATELLITE IMAGERY
THROUGH 0300Z September 1, 2013
Western and Central US: The Rim Fire in east central California continues to emit large quantities of smoke which have spread a large distance from the fire. An area of moderately dense to thick smoke stretches from central California across Nevada into southeastern Oregon, southern Idaho, and far northwestern Utah. Several other fires in Idaho, western Montana, and western Wyoming were also producing moderately dense to thick smoke plumes which moved mainly in an easterly direction during the day. A much larger mass of thinner density smoke from these fires and others burning in the Western US extended from California to the Dakotas and eastward to the western Great Lakes region. The thinner density smoke then spread southward across a good portion of the Central and South Central US though there is some uncertainty on how much the aerosol seen in satellite imagery in this region is smoke and how much is composed of other atmospheric pollutants. Additionally, clusters of what are believed to be mainly agricultural burns were producing many small smoke plumes over central Kansas and the lower Mississippi Valley. JS 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