Smoke from forest fires, as seen on RADAR and satellite imagery

Overview

On the morning of September 3, 2006, forest fires were raging across northern Washington State. The smoke from these fires was causing considerable problems with visibility and air quality over southern British Columbia. On the afternoon of September 3, the smoke plumes became much more apparent, even showing up on RADAR imagery. The satellite and RADAR imagery of this smoke is presented here.

The imagery is also interesting, as the fires appear on the satellite imagery to be originating in Canada. This is a prime example of parallax, where features seen by geostationary satellites are a bit farther equatorward than they appear.

RADAR images

Click here to see the RADAR animation of the smoke

Satellite images

Click here to see the visible satellite animation of the smoke

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