April 17, 2012
Smoke in North East, Dust from Southwest over Baltimore
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. The largest plumes are surrounding the northeastern coastline of the country. Plumes are stretching from South Carolina up through the Mid-Atlantic and into Maine. Much of this smoke is most likely due to the wildfires in Virginia and South Carolina. The animation below shows the EPA AIRNOW AQI values for the Mid-Atlantic Region. There is a strong spread of code yellows due to P.M. 2.5. This is most likely due to the large amount of wildfire and smoke debris in the area mixed with a fairly high amount of sulfates.
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The first image below shows the NAAPS aerosol model of surface smoke concentrations in the Mid-Atlantic region. The highest concentrations correlate with the wildfires in Virginia. The model predicts, in the next few days, that the smoke moves outward in the Atlantic Ocean. The image, taken from MPLNET, shows a layer of aerosols between 0:00 and 6:00 UTC. This layer was strongest around 1:30 UTC between 1.5 ~ 2km.
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The first image below, courtesy HYSPLIT, shows a back-trajectory of this air mass. It appears as if the airmass stops and picks up southeast of Four Corners. Next to that is the Lance WebMapping Service's MODIS image with the AIRS dust score over plotted. Some of this dust may have been picked up and transported over to the Baltimore area.
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