U.S. Air Quality

Smoke over Florida and continued haze in Southern California

Smoke was present over much of Florida today, visible from the MODIS Aqua imagery (right), and also reported in today's HMS analysis. Air quality over central and southern Florida was in the moderate range earlier today, likely partly due to the smoke. The Southern California valley still looks hazy from space (left) and surface air quality was not much different from the last few days, with a few monitors in the "unhealthy for sensitive groups" or orange range. Also worth mentioning is the extensive fire activity all over the southeast and the northwest, click on HMS link above, however except for a few plumes in the southeast, no smoke plumes were detected in the HMS analysis.

Except for southern Oregon, where air quality ranged from moderate to unhealthy, the rest of the country enjoyed good air quality, with frigid temperatures for this time of year in the DC area. I already miss summer !!

The two images below are MODIS Aqua True color imagery from UW MODIS Today and EPA AIRNow AQI
on Google Earth. The imagery over Florida also includes detected fires from MODIS, provided by NOAA/NWS.