{"id":22573,"date":"2016-11-07T14:48:14","date_gmt":"2016-11-07T14:48:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/?p=22573"},"modified":"2016-11-11T17:11:00","modified_gmt":"2016-11-11T17:11:00","slug":"fires-over-the-southeast-united-states","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/archives\/22573","title":{"rendered":"Fires in the southeast United States"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"terramodis_truecolor_7nov2016\"<\/a>

Terra MODIS True-Color Imagery over the Smoky Mountains, 7 November 2016 (Click to enlarge)<\/p><\/div>\n

Persistent moderate to severe drought (shown here<\/a>, from this site<\/a>) over the southeastern United States has supported the development of fires in and around the Great Smoky Mountains on 7 November 2016<\/a>. True-color imagery from Terra MODIS, above, (source: MODIS Today<\/a>) showed the active fires and plumes of smoke spreading northward into the Ohio River Valley.<\/p>\n

Suomi NPP VIIRS true-color imagery<\/a> also captured the smoke emanating from the active fires, and the Aerosol Optical Depth product<\/a>, toggled below (data sources: RealEarth<\/a>) showed the extent of the thickest smoke layer (click here<\/a> for an animation that does not include the RealEarth framing).<\/p>\n

\"Suomi<\/a>

Suomi NPP VIIRS true-color image with fire detection locations (red dots), and VIIRS Aerosol Optical Depth product [click to enlarge]<\/p><\/div>A sequence of true-color Red\/Green\/Blue (RGB) images from Terra MODIS (1643 UTC), Suomi NPP VIIRS (1809 UTC) and Aqua MODIS (1824 UTC) is shown below.<\/p>\n

\"Terra<\/a>

Terra MODIS, Suomi NPP VIIRS and Aqua MODIS true-color images [click to enlarge]<\/p><\/div>The temporal evolution of the smoke was captured on GOES-13 Visible (0.63 \u00b5m) images (below; also available as an MP4 animation<\/a>). Smoke reduced the surface visibility to 2.5 – 3.0 miles at some locations in Kentucky (KJKL<\/a> | KLOZ<\/a>) and Tennessee (KOQT<\/a>), leading to EPA Air Quality Index<\/a> values in the “Unhealthy” category.<\/p>\n

\"GOES-13<\/a>

GOES-13 Visible (0.63 \u00b5m) images; hourly surface weather symbols are plotted in yellow, with surface visibility (statute miles) plotted in cyan [click to play animation]<\/p><\/div>\n

===== 10 November Update =====<\/p>\n

\"GOES-13<\/a>

GOES-13 Visible (0.63 \u00b5m) images; hourly surface weather symbols are plotted in yellow, with surface visibility (statute miles) plotted in cyan [click to play animation]<\/p><\/div>In the wake of a cold frontal passage on 09 November, northerly to northeasterly winds were transporting the smoke south-southwestward as the fires continued to burn on 10 November. GOES-13 Visible (0.63 \u00b5m) images, above, showed the dense smoke plumes — some of which were briefly reducing the surface visibility to less than 1 statute mile in far western North Carolina (Andrews<\/a> | Franklin<\/a>). In Georgia, smoke restricted the visibility to 2.5 miles as far south as Columbus<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A Pilot Report (PIREP) in northern Georgia at 1530 UTC, below, indicated that the top of the smoke layer was around 3500 feet (where the Flight Visibility was 4 miles).\u00a0 Surface reports in the vicinity of that PIREP indicated a ceiling of 1500 to 1700 feet, suggesting that the dense smoke layer aloft was about 1800-2000 feet thick over northern Georgia.<\/p>\n

\"GOES-13<\/a>

GOES-13 Visible (0.63 \u00b5m) image, with cloud ceiling (hundreds of feet above ground level) and visibility (statute miles) plotted in cyan and a Pilot Report in yellow [click to enlarge]<\/p><\/div>The smoke plumes showed up very well on an Aqua MODIS true-color RGB image from the MODIS Today<\/a> site, below.<\/p>\n

\"Aqua<\/a>

Aqua MODIS true-color image [click to enlarge]<\/p><\/div>The 1858 UTC Suomi NPP VIIRS true-color image (with fire detections) and the Aerosol Optical Depth product, below, depicted the aerial coverage of the smoke.<\/p>\n

\"Suomi<\/a>

Suomi NPP VIIRS true-color image (with fire detection locations in red) and Aerosol Optical Depth product [click to enlarge]<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Persistent moderate to severe drought (shown here, from this site) over the southeastern United States has supported the development of fires in and around the Great Smoky Mountains on 7 November 2016. True-color imagery from Terra MODIS, above, (source: MODIS Today) showed the active fires and plumes of smoke spreading northward into the Ohio River […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":22574,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,70,21,11,12,53,45,49,71],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-air-quality","category-aqua","category-aviation","category-goes-13","category-modis","category-real-earth","category-redgreenblue-rgb-images","category-suomi_npp","category-terra"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22573"}],"version-history":[{"count":35,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22573\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22617,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22573\/revisions\/22617"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}