Where There’s Smoke There’s Fire

Jun 12, 2011; 4:55 PM ET

One of the first things I noticed upon arriving at the beach Saturday afternoon was the smoke. It clouded the air of the Outer Banks here in North Carolina, and had a terrible scent. It was even hard to breathe. Being a meteorologist of course I had heard about the forest fires in the eastern part of the state. To confirm this is what it was, I looked at a MODIS satellite image:

The North Carolina Forest Service on Facebook says that the fire started more than a month ago, and was caused by lightning.

The image above is actually from the day before (Saturday’s image was not as clear). The fires are burning in a diagonal row in front of the light blue line, and the smoke is spreading out to the northeast along the arrows. The green arrow indicates my location. On Saturday, the smoke shifted northward over me, as local wind directions changed. Saturday night, it shifted south again, but Sunday afternoon it came back.

CAPTION: The “Pains Bay Fire” illustrated on Google Maps by InciWeb

Hopefully after the cold front passes through our area tonight, bringing temperate weather for the week, the winds will shift to come out of the northwest, and the smoke will stay south. That’s good for me, of course, but not necessarily for other vacationers further down the ‘Banks.