DESCRIPTIVE TEXT NARRATIVE FOR SMOKE/DUST OBSERVED IN SATELLITE IMAGERY
THROUGH 1545Z April 18, 2015
Pacific Northwest/Canada: A relatively expansive plume of smoke is capture in morning visible satellite imagery extending from southern Saskatchewan across central Montana, northern two-thirds of Idaho, Washington, Oregon, and northern California. This area of smoke (with a low probability of dust/sand mixed in) has been traced back to numerous large wildfires burning across Siberia. These fires produced pyrocumulus clouds that enabled the smoke to rise quickly and become entrained in the atmospheric jet stream. The first plume of smoke that has been since transported across the northern Pacific and is now located over the Pacific Northwest and southwestern to south-central Canada. Additional large detached smoke plumes were seen yesterday beginning to follow the same trajectory. A blog from NASA provides an excellent track of the history of this event (ozoneaq.gsfc.nasa.gov/omps/blog). Warren 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