DESCRIPTIVE TEXT NARRATIVE FOR SMOKE/DUST OBSERVED IN SATELLITE IMAGERY
THROUGH 1800Z August 21, 2021
SMOKE: U.S./Canada/Atlantic/Pacific off the West Coast… Wildfires in the Western U.S. and Southwestern Canada continued to burn and were responsible for an extremely large area of smoke which affected significant portions of the U.S. and Canada as well as the eastern Pacific off the West Coast and the northern and central Atlantic between the Canadian Maritimes and Northeastern U.S. and Europe. Thick smoke primarily from the wildfires in the Western U.S. covered a sizable portion of California and the Pacific to the southwest of California and extended farther inland over Nevada, southern and southeastern Oregon, southern Idaho, and far western Utah. More localized thicker density smoke could be seen closer to some of the wildfires in southern British Columbia. Cloud cover over part of the Pacific Northwest limited smoke detection somewhat in satellite imagery but at least some moderate smoke was visible in between breaks in the clouds in that region. Farther to the east, a large batch of moderate to thick density smoke attributed in part to the Western U.S. wildfires as well as a few wildfires over south central Canada and northern Minnesota was visible stretching along the northern tier of the U.S. from Michigan to Maine and across eastern Ontario and western and central Quebec. Finally, a rather concentrated patch of dense smoke, linked to wildfires in Canada and the Western U.S., was present over the eastern Atlantic likely moving into Europe. Alaska/Gulf of Alaska/Western and Northwestern Canada/Northwestern U.S… Some remnant thin density smoke likely from recent wildfire activity in Siberia was visible this morning spreading to the southeast across far southern Alaska, the Gulf of Alaska, and over British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest where it merges with smoke from the wildfires in southern British Columbia and the Western U.S. Additional thin density smoke likely from the Siberian wildfires was seen spreading to the east and southeast across northwestern Canada. DUST: Atlantic/Caribbean Region... A very large area of mainly moderate density Saharan dust was detected reaching as far west as the eastern Bahamas, eastern Cuba, Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, and the central and eastern Caribbean. The huge mass of dust extended from these areas to the east and over virtually the entire tropical and subtropical Atlantic to the western coast of Africa. 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