DESCRIPTIVE TEXT NARRATIVE FOR SMOKE/DUST OBSERVED IN SATELLITE IMAGERY
THROUGH 0300Z August 17, 2016
SMOKE: California and Oregon eastward to the western Great Lakes: Numerous wildfires in the Western US, particularly in California eastern Oregon, southern Idaho and northwest Wyoming, have been producing smoke for several days which has been spreading eastward and now stretches across the central Plains into northern Illinois and southern Lake Michigan. The eastern portions of the smoke were quite light and diffuse. Patches of moderately dense smoke were seen over southern Nebraska into Kansas. Closer to the source fires, moderately dense smoke covered much of Wyoming, southwest Montana, southern Idaho and eastern Oregon with dense smoke over southern Idaho, southwest Wyoming and eastern Oregon. Fingers of moderately dense smoke also extended to the south along the northern Utah/Nevada border and also east of Salt Lake City southward along the spine of the Wasatch mountains. The Blue Cut fire east of Los Angeles exploded this afternoon and evening and was producing an expansive area of very thick smoke that was moving to the east and northeast reaching the Nevada border by sunset. The wildfires along the central California coast were producing moderately dense smoke with residual smoke from these fires covering much of the Central Valley. Northern Canada: An area of light smoke with embedded patches of moderately dense smoke was seen along a north/south axis extending from western Nunavut southward along the Northwest Territories border into northwest Manitoba and northeast Saskatchewan. This area of smoke was slowly drifting to the east. DUST: While not visible in satellite imagery this evening due to extensive cloud cover, news reports and surface weather observations indicate that a dust storm was generated from strong thunderstorm outflow winds over south central and southwest Arizona. 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