DESCRIPTIVE TEXT NARRATIVE FOR SMOKE/DUST OBSERVED IN SATELLITE IMAGERY
THROUGH 0230Z October 23, 2018.
SMOKE: Western U.S./Southwestern Canada... Similar to the past few days, a combination of seasonal burning and a few wildfires scattered across portions of California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and western Montana in the U.S. and southern British Columbia in southwestern Canada were responsible for numerous areas of mainly thin density smoke. The most significant patches of smoke were over central and western Oregon and roughly the northern two-thirds of California. Thicker smoke was generally confined relatively closer to some of these fires. South Central Canada/North Dakota/Northwestern Minnesota... A tremendous amount of seasonal/agricultural fires were detected over southern Saskatchewan and southern Manitoba in south central Canada and the northern half of North Dakota and northwestern Minnesota in the north central U.S. Many smoke plumes of primarily thin density were visible moving to the southeast with some of the plumes merging to form larger areas of smoke by the end of the day. Southeastern U.S... Some smoke was seen with more than a dozen of the seasonal fires scattered across the Southeastern U.S. though cloudiness moving across the region did interfere with smoke detection in satellite imagery. 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/data/land/fire/currenthms.jpg GIS: ftp://satpsanone.nesdis.noaa.gov/FIRE/HMS/GIS/ KML: http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/land/fire/fire.kml (fire) http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/land/fire/smoke.kml (smoke) ANY QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS REGARDING THIS PRODUCT SHOULD BE SENT TO: SSDFireTeam@noaa.gov