August 19, 2009
Smoke over British Columbia, haze over the Northern Atlantic and "unhealthy for sensitive groups" in California and Oregon
According to the SSD fire team at NOAA and the HMS map, a fairly large area of moderately dense to dense smoke covers much of Northern Washington, North Idaho, and Southern British Columbia. This smoke is mostly due to a large fire burning in southern British Columbia. The AQUA RGB image (top, left) clearly shows a smoke plume covering British Columbia, Washington and Northern Oregon. This leads to strong TERRA AOD values over the area (above 0.8 at 550 nm, top right). Let's note that GASP also shows significant AOD values over the region.
Light haze seems to be drifting northeastward well off the Mid-Atlantic coast. This seems to lead to fairly stronger TERRA AOD values on the Northeastern edge of the map.
A very localized AOD peak is shown over Southern California where, according to the EPA AIRNow's PM2.5 map (bottom, left), air conditions are "unhealthy for sensitive groups". This is also the case for ozone levels (bottom, right) over a significant part of California and Southern Oregon.
Finally, according to the Maryland weather blog, hurricane Bill swirled up to Category 4 on the Saffir-Simpson scale. The storm's top sustained winds are now near 135 mph (latest forecast advisory from NOAA)
 |  |
 |  |