March 6, 2012
Smoke from Southeast and Great Lakes Regions spreading northeast, Code Red forecast in Arizona
The first image below, courtesy NOAA HMS, shows the fire locations across the United States. The red dots correspond to active fires, and the grey areas are plumes. There are large plumes in the center of the country, coming from fires spread throughout the southern states and Great Lakes region. The next image, courtesy EPA Airnow, shows the forecast for the AQI in the Pacific Southwest region. These code oranges and reds were forecasted for elevated PM 2.5, but never actually reached these levels. This is mainly caused by large amounts of dust blowing in the region that has been discussed in many recent posts.
 |  |
The first image below shows the Micro Pulse Lidar that is stationed at UMBC. You can see the aerosol and smoke aloft coming from these smoke plumes indicated in the HMS image. This image only has temporal coverage for a few hours, but more images will most likely come in tomorrow's post.The next image, courtesy CALIPSO, shows a swath that passes through the smoke plumes in the Great Lakes Region. You can see that these plumes are about the same altitude as the plumes moving across Baltimore, but there is also some plumes higher aloft.
 |  |
The image below shows the UMBC ELF extinction for the same plume moving overhead as in the MPL image. The aerosols in this layer are once again a mix of smoke and debris that have moved up from wildfires in the Mississippi Valley and Great Lakes States.
 |