August 5, 2008
Haze from Texas to South Carolina, still smoke in California and tropical storm Edouard has made landfall on the northwest Gulf Coast.
Today’s MODIS TERRA RGB image (top left) shows strong haze mixed with clouds over Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kansas and Missouri. If watched carefully (out of the sunglint), some haze also seems to be hovering over South and North Carolina. This is confirmed by today’s GASP AOD map (top, right) where we can see a widespread particle plume showing strong AOD from Texas to North Carolina where the National Interangency Fire Center respectively reported 4 and 2 large fires. Today’s MODIS TERRA AOD values are very strong (above 1 at 550 nm) over North Carolina (View image). This haze is not measured at the ground as today’s EPA PM2.5 map (bottom, left) shows “good” to “moderate” air quality conditions over the nation. On another hand, this plume is correlated to strong ozone levels (bottom, right), reaching code red in Oklahoma and North Carolina later in the day.
Smoke also induced strong GASP and MODIS AOD values over Northern California and Oregon (View image). No strong PM2.5 values are recorded in the area but a lot of ground-based monitoring stations seem to be missing today.
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As predicted, tropical storm Edouard came ashore west of the Texas-Louisiana border and east of Galveston (see MODIS AQUA RGB image below). Without ever reaching hurricane strength (latest advisory), Edouard still caused strong winds, heavy rains and a brief electrical outage. Houston is looking at rainfall rates of 2 to 4 inches an hour today, with accumulations up to eight inches in some spots.
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Finally, this is a view of Tropical Storm Edouard from Expedition 17 Flight Engineer Greg Chamitoff on the International Space Station.
Posted by Meloe Kacenelenbogen at August 5, 2008 7:21 PM