DESCRIPTIVE TEXT NARRATIVE FOR SMOKE/DUST OBSERVED IN SATELLITE IMAGERY
THROUGH 0200Z March 26, 2016
SMOKE: Western Gulf/Lower Mississippi River Valley/Tennessee River Valley: A large area of an optically thin aerosol was seen in satellite imagery this evening moving eastward and spanned from southern Texas through the Lower Mississippi River Valley into the Tennessee River Valley. This is believed to be remnant smoke and dust/sand though its source is not entirely clear. There is uncertainty in the full extent of this smoke due to its diffuse nature. The smoke most likely came from fires in Mexico and in the Central US; in particular the large Anderson Creek grass fire along the Oklahoma/Kansas border, which had burned over 400,000 acres as of Thursday. Western and Central Gulf of Mexico/Bay of Campeche: Several areas of thin remnant smoke were observed over parts of the western/central Gulf southward to the Bay of Campeche. Patchy cloud cover over western parts of the area and more dense cloud cover over the eastern Gulf of Mexico likely obscures some smoke as well. Much of this smoke is from fires in Mexico yesterday. A patch of smoke off the coast of Louisiana/Texas is thought to be remnant from the Anderson Creek Fire though. DUST: Nevada: A small plume of light density dust/sand was observed in west-central Nevada traveling towards the southeast from north-central Churchill county to southwest Lander county Nevada. The source of this aerosol appears to be Humboldt Sink. Western Gulf/Lower Mississippi River Valley/Tennessee River Valley: Elevated dust/sand could be seen in morning imagery stretched from the Lower Mississippi River Valley southwest across the northwestern Gulf/far southern Texas/far northeast Mexico mixing with the small amount of observed smoke. The dust/sand likely came from the White Sands National Monument in south central New Mexico and dry lake beds in Texas as well as dust in northwest New Mexico, northeast Arizona and Texas over the past two days. -Cronin 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