Smoke over the U.S. Midwest

Smoke over the U.S. Midwest

Smoke from Arizona fires, including the Wallow Fire, continued traveling toward the northeast on June 8, 2011. As the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on the Terra satellite acquired this natural-color image at 12:10 Central Daylight Time, thick smoke stretched from New Mexico and Texas northeastward to Illinois.

Red outlines in this image indicate actively burning fires, but the blazes primarily responsible for the smoke lie to the west. On June 8, 2011, the U.S. Air Quality “Smog Blog” reported that wildfires in eastern Arizona affected air quality throughout much of the eastern United States. The thickest smoke occurred over the Plains States, but thinner smoke plumes reached Quebec, Canada, and stretched to the Atlantic Ocean off New England.

NASA image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team at NASA GSFC. Caption by Michon Scott.

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