DESCRIPTIVE TEXT NARRATIVE FOR SMOKE/DUST OBSERVED IN SATELLITE IMAGERY
THROUGH 1835Z July 18, 2022
SMOKE: North Central Plains into Central Plains and Great Lakes Region... The enormous area of thin density smoke continues to be seen today covering northern Idaho, northern Montana, plunging south as far as Oklahoma and extending east into Illinois and Michigan. Canada into Northeastern US... Significant cloud cover again covered a sizable portion of Alaska which is preventing detection of the recent significant wildfires and much of the smoke which had been present there prior to the increase in cloud cover. Only a relatively small swath of remnant thin density smoke was seen this morning across northwestern Canada. Much of the lower provinces of Canada were covered in primarily light density smoke due to widespread wildfire activity. A concentrated area of thick smoke was observed in southeastern Canada extending east due to very concentrated wildfire complexes. Light smoke from these ongoing fires was wrapped into weather systems and drawn into the northeastern US and into the Atlantic Ocean. Mid-Atlantic… Possible light smoke and/or dust was observed ahead of the cloud line as a weather system moved into eastern West Virginia, Virginia and Maryland. DUST: Tropical Atlantic/Eastern Caribbean into GOM and Southern US… A very large area of Saharan dust extend from Puerto Rico, Hispaniola, the central and eastern Caribbean, and the Atlantic to the east of the Bahamas possibly including the eastern Bahamas and encroached on the Gulf of Mexico and neighboring states. Saharan dust was also observed over Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas and into bordering edges of Mississippi and Tennessee. Levine 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 map: https://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/land/fire/currenthms.jpg Smoke data: https://satepsanone.nesdis.noaa.gov/pub/FIRE/web/HMS/Smoke_Polygons Fire data: https://satepsanone.nesdis.noaa.gov/pub/FIRE/web/HMS/Fire_Points ANY QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS REGARDING THIS PRODUCT SHOULD BE SENT TO: SSDFireTeam@noaa.gov