U.S. Air Quality

Good AQI over the Nation; Large Fires in Pacific Northwest

Air quality conditions continue to improve and the actual levels are better than those reported yesterday by Alex. Nevertheless, after 5:00 PM Ozone levels changed from good to moderate mainly in the Mississippi Valley and California. In terms of PM2.5 most of the stations read good levels but again once California and the Northwest region experienced moderate levels due to the fires (top right). The main event right now is due to the large wildfires burning in northern California, Oregon, and Idaho which are producing a light to moderately dense remnant smoke mass that covers much of the region. Very dense smoke extended from northern California across southeast Oregon and into central Idaho. The dense smoke was captured by the true color image from MODIS (middle).
High aerosol optical depth AOD was also detected in the Pacific Northwest region where the big fires are taking place (bottom left).