Smoke on the Water

By the way, my co-worker Meghan had the idea for today's musical title, courtesy of Deep Purple.

One of the worst wildfire seasons in recent time is ongoing across the Northwest Territories (NT). The late spring was unusually dry across the region. Most of the 100+ fires were triggered by lightning, but some were also caused by human activity.

A massive of plume of smoke continues to spread southeast, passing over the flooded regions of Saskatchewan and deep into the U.S as far south as Missouri.

Luckily, most of the smoke is well above the surface and being carried by strong winds higher up in the atmosphere.

The visible satellite image below from this morning clearly shows the narrow, gray smoke plume extending from just below the word "NASA" to the right side of the image.

The EC satellite shows the plume (green color) stretching all the way into northwestern Missouri.

The main impacts of the smoke from Saskatchewan to Missouri is reduced visibility from haze. The haze will also lead to deeper, red sunsets.

Rainfall over the past 30 days across the Prairies...

The floods across Saskatchewan and Manitoba have been devastating for many people living in low-lying areas near rivers and streams. Farmers have also be hard hit.

The first image below shows the accumulated rainfall over the past 30 days in millimeters.

The second image from EC shows the percentage of normal rainfall across this same region over the past 30 days.

Warm, humid air will quickly funnel northward into the northern U.S. Plains and southern Prairies Thursday and as a potent upper-level storm system approaches from the northwest there will be the potential for severe thunderstorms over southeastern Saskatchewan and extreme western Manitoba later in the afternoon and into the evening. Damaging winds and hail will be the main threats, though an isolated tornado cannot be ruled out once again.

Looking ahead, there will be a sharp contrast of air masses from west to east across the country the first half of next week with a heat wave in BC and unusually cool weather from Manitoba to Ontario.

The GFS ensemble model forecast below shows the predicted temperature anomalies in degrees F. for Tuesday.

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Happy birthday Mom!

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