DESCRIPTIVE TEXT NARRATIVE FOR SMOKE/DUST OBSERVED IN SATELLITE IMAGERY
THROUGH 0300Z September 2, 2015
SMOKE: Western US: Moderately dense to thick smoke spread to the north and northeast from an ongoing large wildfire burning in east central California with the thicker smoke reaching into western Nevada. Active wildfires and plumes of moderately dense to thick smoke were also visible moving to the northeast from fires burning in northeastern Oregon, central and northern Idaho, and western Montana. Much of the US and Southern Canada: An enormous coverage of detached smoke of varying density attributed to the Western US wildfires could be seen in satellite imagery extending from California northeastward to Montana. The detached smoke then could be detected across a good portion of the Central US and from the Great Lakes Region and Ohio Valley to the Middle Atlantic Region and the Northeast and off the East Coast over the Atlantic. The smoke also covered portions of southern Canada all the way from eastern British Columbia to the Canadian Maritimes. BLOWING DUST: A small streak of thin density blowing dust originated from a point source in south central Oregon around 22Z and continued to move to the east until just prior to sunset. AIRBORNE GLACIAL FLOUR: Alaska: The plume of either light density smoke leftover from an earlier active fire nearby or possibly airborne glacial flour which was visible moving south off the coast of Kodiak Island into the Gulf of Alaska had become much less discernible in satellite imagery by later in the day. Another streak of what is believed to be glacial flour lofted into the atmosphere was seen moving to the south over the Gulf of Alaska from a source region in southeastern Alaska to the east of Anchorage. 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