Haze over Utah

September 8, 2007

Haze clouded the skies over the southwestern United States, especially Utah, on September 8, 2007. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite took this picture the same day. In this image, the pale colors dominating western Utah result partly from the light hues of the underlying ground surface, but a substantial gray-beige mass hangs in the atmosphere. The haze is thick enough to almost completely obscure the view of the Great Salt Lake.

Although the exact origin of Utah’s early September haze was not clear, it probably resulted from smoke released by fires to the north and west in Idaho and California.

NASA image courtesy the MODIS Rapid Response Team, Goddard Space Flight Center