The Pacific Northwest’s recent string of wildfires caused transcontinental haziness.
According to a NASA hurricane-and-air-particle simulation put out on Monday, wildfire smoke from Washington, Oregon and what looks like a few puffs from Northern California, blew clear across America’s Bible Belt and into Europe in September.
Imagine: the same wildfire smoke inhaled by an Arcata hipster on Labor Day, reaching the lungs of a Spanish sheep herder a week later.
“This visualization uses data from NASA satellites, combined with mathematical models in a computer simulation allow scientists to study the physical processes in our atmosphere,” NASA wrote in the YouTube video description.
At about 45 seconds into the video, the simulation shows the Pacific Northwest exhale a thick cloud of wildfire smoke, before blowing it across the country and directly into Europe’s face. America!
“By following the sea salt that is evaporated from the ocean, you can see the storms of the 2017 hurricane season,” NASA wrote. “During the same time, large fires in the Pacific Northwest released smoke into the atmosphere. Large weather patterns can transport these particles long distances: in early September, you can see a line of smoke from Oregon and Washington, down the Great Plains, through the South, and across the Atlantic to England.”
If you keep an eye on the dates in the lower left-hand corner of the video, you can match the visuals up with Oregon’s Chetco Bar Fire, which ignited on July 12, and the Wine Country Wildfires which ignited on October 8 and 9.
The simulation also shows dust kicked up in the African Sahara blow across the Atlantic and into Florida. Pretty cool stuff; check it out.