U.S. Air Quality

Pacific Northwest Fires Continue to Burn, and Smoke Aloft Over Baltimore

Fires along the Pacific Northwest continue to impact the air quality and satellite retrievals over this region. The Alpine Lake fire in northwestern Wyoming, the fires in northern Idaho, and in southwestern Washington State (Cascade Creek fire complex) are emitting smoke as shown in the MODIS Aqua "true color/rgb", and yielding high AOD retrievals (top right GOES East AOD image). PM2.5 concentrations in Idaho (Salmon and Sisters Forest Service monitoring stations) reached Hazardous AQI levels. The smoke has moved also moved across the US, and it made its way over Baltimore, as shown in today's ELF lidar timeseries. The smoke is confined to heights between 3 to 6 km. The planetary boundary layer extended up to 1.5 km.