April 25, 2008
Smoke in the Northwest, Canada, and Texas
Smoke is still leading to areas of high AOD over a number of regions throughout the U.S. The MODIS AOD was 0.5 or above (top left) over the northwest, south-central Canada, and over the Pacific west of Baja California. There is also a region of high AOD over Northern Texas/Okhahoma/Kansas/ clearly visible as well in the MODIS terra RGB (top right).
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These 72-hour backtrajectories ran from northern Texas at 14Z today do show low level flow from the central U.S regions impacted by smoke earlier this week, as well rapid mid-tropospheric level flow from the pacific where the AOD was also high yesterday. Notice the green (mid-tropospheric) trajectory also goes over the regions of Nevada with fairly high aerosol content yesterday. See Nikisa's post from yesterday and the MODIS AOD map.
There was moderately thick haze over Oregon (left) also most likely due to the transported smoke from Russia. Air quality was good throughout the northwest though, which suggests the aerosols/smoke are above the boundary layer. California (right) looks fairly haze free and air quality was good in the central valley with the exception of Fresno, but there is still some smoke over the Pacific off the northern California coast.
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