Smoke in the Pacific Northwest and eastern Canada
Aqua and Terra MODIS true color imagery shows two areas of significant smoke today: across parts of the Pacific Northwest region of the US, and also across parts of Quebec and Labrador in eastern Canada (northeast of the cloud shield that is the remnants of Tropical Storm Ernesto spreading over the northeastern US and the eastern Great Lakes). The smoke in the northwestern US is due to ongoing wildfire activity that has persisted there for the last few weeks; the smoke in eastern Canada is likely from wildfires earlier in the week over Ontario, which was subsequently transported eastward. These smoke features were also evident as regions of elevated MODIS aerosol optical depth (AOD) on the IDEA products — IDEA trajectories initialized in eastern Washington state (where the maximum smoke thickness and associated AOD values were present) show that those aerosols will linger over WA during the next 1-2 days, while model wind fields suggest that the smoke in Quebec will continue to be transported slowly southeastward.
