Significant wildfire activity can be observed along Alaska and Northwestern Canada with smoke spreading along Washington, Oregon, Idaho and northern California and Nevada. Smoke from Canadian wildfires in Manitoba and Ontario is widespread along the Great Lakes, Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern United States according to NOAA’s Hazard Mapping System Fire and Smoke Product (Figure 1).
A thick plume of smoke, and its corresponding AOD retrieval, from the Canadian wildfires was observed this morning in today’s GOES-16 GeoColor and AOD Product over the Great Lakes, the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern states (Figure 2 and 3: NOAA STAR NESDIS Aerosol Watch Product from 12:41 UTC (8:41 EDT)).
This plume has not impacted the surface air quality monitors as shown in the lidar timeseries below from measurements at City College of New York (Figure 4), Howard University Beltsville Research Campus (Figure 5) and UMBC (Figure 6). The smoke was observed 2500-4000 meters and above the boundary layer. The boundary layer at 18:00 UTC (2:00 pm EDT) had a max height around 2000 meters. Real-time lidar timeseries for these sites are available under the Real Time Data tab (above), as well as images from past days under the Archived Data tab.
