DESCRIPTIVE TEXT NARRATIVE FOR SMOKE/DUST OBSERVED IN SATELLITE IMAGERY
THROUGH 0001Z August 13, 2023
SMOKE: United States/Alaska/Canada/Atlantic Ocean... Major widespread wildfire activity continues especially across western and northwestern Canada with another cluster of wildfires present over west central Quebec to the southeast of Hudson Bay. All of these wildfires were primarily responsible for a massive area of smoke which covered much of central and northern Canada, central and northern Alaska, as well as the eastern two thirds of U.S., parts of the western Atlantic, the northern Gulf of Mexico, and eastern Mexico. Within the much larger area of thinner density smoke were thicker batches. A very long west to east elongated swath of thick density smoke primarily from the significant wildfires in northwestern Canada was still visible this evening extending from the Bering Sea to the east across Alaska and northwestern and north central Canada to Hudson Bay. Oregon... A larger wildfire in west central Oregon was emitting moderate to thick density smoke which moved to the south and southwest during the morning nearly reaching the border with far northwestern California. DUST: Central and Eastern Caribbean Region/Bahamas/Atlantic Ocean... Some very thin density Saharan dust was still visible this evening across the central and eastern Caribbean region and to the north of there over the Atlantic just east of the Bahamas. More significant dust was noted much farther to the east over the Atlantic closer to and over western Africa. Rodriguez 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