DESCRIPTIVE TEXT NARRATIVE FOR SMOKE/DUST OBSERVED IN SATELLITE IMAGERY
THROUGH 0300Z July 12, 2014
SMOKE: Canada/Northern U.S: A tremendous area of smoke continues to be seen in satellite imagery this evening from the numerous wildfires burning in northern Canada around Great Slave and Great Bear Lakes in addition to fire in western Alberta and British Columbia. This large mass of smoke, much of which is medium to dense, covers most of Alberta and Saskatchewan, western Manitoba and central British Columbia, as well as the areas of the Northwest Territories near the fires. The smoke has also been drawn down into the northern Plains of the US, circulating counter clockwise around a large storm system west of Hudson Bay. This smoke is light to moderately dense and covers eastern Montana, North Dakota and Minnesota. An area of light remnant smoke for the wildfires in northern Canada was drifting across southeast Canada from the Gulf of St Lawrence to the southern Labrador Sea. Washington/Idaho: Smoke from the Rock Hill and Mills Canyon wildfires in Washington has spread east and west and reaches from Puget Sound eastward into northern Idaho. The smoke is moderate to dense near the fires on the eastern slopes of the Cascades. California: A fire west of Redding has generated a moderately dense smoke plume that was drifting to the north. Another fire in the southern Sierra west of China Lake generated a moderately dense to dense plume that fanned out to the west, north and northeast. DUST: Lower Mississippi Valley: An area of Saharan dust was detected over the western Gulf of Mexico extending inland across much of central and eastern Texas across the Red River into central Oklahoma. The dust was also likely mixing with sulfates over inland areas. Ruminski 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.ospo.noaa.gov/Products/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