DESCRIPTIVE TEXT NARRATIVE FOR SMOKE/DUST OBSERVED IN SATELLITE IMAGERY
THROUGH 0300Z October 14, 2017
SMOKE: California/Pacific Ocean/Nevada/Utah/Colorado/Wyoming/Nebraska... Wildfires burning over northwestern California continue to produce moderately dense to thick smoke which moved mainly to the south during the afternoon spreading across portions of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay region and out over the eastern Pacific off the California coast. A larger surrounding area of thinner density smoke primarily from the northwestern California wildfires as well as a few scattered in the Sierra-Nevada range can be seen over a good portion of California. A swath of thinner density smoke attributed primarily to the wildfire in Tulare County of the southern Sierra-Nevada Mountains was visible stretching from southern Nevada to central Nebraska. Arkansas/Louisiana... Similar to yesterday, numerous seasonal/agricultural fires were detected over southeastern Missouri, eastern Arkansas, and Louisiana resulting in many thin density smoke plumes with a number of the plumes merging to form larger areas of thin density smoke across the region. Southern Canada/North Dakota/Northern Minnesota... Numerous seasonal agricultural fires were analyzed over southern Saskatchewan and southern Manitoba of Canada as well as northeastern North Dakota and northwestern Minnesota. Many thin density smoke plumes were also seen with quite a few of these fires though cloudiness did interfere with smoke detection in satellite imagery in a portion of this region. DUST: Lesser Antilles... A region of Saharan dust could be seen this morning generally near/over the Lesser Antilles and east of there. 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