DESCRIPTIVE TEXT NARRATIVE FOR SMOKE/DUST OBSERVED IN SATELLITE IMAGERY
THROUGH 0245Z August 16, 2015
SMOKE: Northwestern/North Central US/South Central Canada: The large number of wildfires scattered across portions of the Northwestern US continued to emit tremendous quantities of smoke. The largest and most dense area of smoke of moderate to thick density was visible spreading to the east across portions of Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, across Montana and North Dakota. The thicker smoke also covered much of the southern half of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba in southwestern Canada. Northern and Central California: Thick smoke from the cluster of fires in northern California moved primarily to the south and over west central California and offshore over the Pacific along the coast. East Central California/Western Nevada: Fires in the Sierras produced thick smoke plumes which moved to the northeast into western Nevada. Much of the US and Southern to Southeastern Canada: An extremely large surrounding mass of mainly thin density smoke was visible in between the thicker areas of smoke over the Western and Northwestern US and also over a large portion of the Central and South Central US as well as over the northern Great Lakes region. The thinner density smoke also covered much of southeastern Canada and was just beginning to enter the Northeastern US over northern NY state and northern New England. 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.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