DESCRIPTIVE TEXT NARRATIVE FOR SMOKE/DUST OBSERVED IN SATELLITE IMAGERY
THROUGH 1700Z August 21, 2023
SMOKE: United States/Canada/Northern Mexico/Atlantic Ocean/Eastern Pacific Ocean... Widespread cloud cover continued to cover regions of Alaska, northern Canad, and western/northern U.S , which limits the visibility on some of the recent wildfires and smoke impacting those regions. Numerous wildfires were still seen over a portion of the Northwest Territories, northern Alberta, and scattered across British Columbia in Canada. Wildfires in the U.S continued to burn in parts of Washington, Idaho, western Montana, western Oregon, and northwestern California, however heavy cloud cover from the recent Hurricane Hilary has it made it difficult to analyze over in the western U.S. For the smoke, western Canadian wildfires and northwestern U.S. wildfires were responsible for a very large area of moderate density smoke which was seen extending into Pacific Ocean off the coast southwestern Oregon and northwestern California. From here, the moderate density smoke extended northeast through Canada and extended off the Pacific coast through most of western, central Canada and eastern parts of Canada. In addition, moderate remnant density smoke was seen over most of southern U.S,parts of the eastern U.S, and the Atlantic ocean off of southeastern Canada, with it likely from the same wildfires. Thick density smoke from both the wildfires in California and western Canada was seen engulfing parts of the northwestern U.S, British Columbia, Alberta and a portion of Saskatchewan. The larger surrounding area of thinner density smoke was seen over much of Canada and the U.S. with the exception of parts of western U.S due to cloud cover, northern Mexico, the northern Gulf of Mexico, and a relatively small part of the far eastern Pacific off the U.S. west coast and portions of the western and northern Atlantic over Greenland reaching as far as Ireland. DUST: Southern Gulf of Mexico/Central America/Yucatan Peninsula/Southern Florida/Bahamas/Caribbean Region/Atlantic Ocean… A sprawling area of generally thin density Saharan dust continued to be partially visible during the morning, extending from the Bay of Campeche, the Yucatan Peninsula, and some of Central America to the east and northeast over virtually all of the Caribbean region, the southern Gulf of Mexico, southern Florida, and the Bahamas. A thicker area was seen just off the coat of western Africa and central Atlantic. Nguyen 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