U.S. Air Quality

Southeastern fires, fires, and more fires

In the areas where the PM2.5 levels are moderate or unhealthy for sensitive groups, clouds cover the sites with those readings. The national map with MODIS Aqua RGB, AIRNOW PM, and NOAA GOES and MODIS fire locations shows that there are numerous fires in the US southeast. One fire cluster in western Florida does raise the optical depth to about 0.3.

Again, on Fort Stewart, GA, a large plume is seen in Bryan County. There is only one hot spot seen in the GOES fire detects for such a large circular plume. One wonders if the folks at the Army base blew something up intentionally or whether this is from a firefighting school. If anyone knows, you can use the comment feature.

Weekly Recap: On Saturday, we are going to start a recap feature to look back at the week's postings to see what the "big story" of the week is. This week was pretty good for particulate air quality in the country with the eastern end of Oklahoma showing moderate PM readings for more than four days this week. Nikisa Jordan published a paper on burning in this area and these "savannah" fires are generally agricultural in origin and intentionally set.