October 2, 2019 - Smoke and Snow over the Boundary Ranges

On September 26, 2019, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on board NASA’s Aqua satellite acquired a true-color image of smoke and snow across the Boundary Ranges.

The Boundary Ranges, the largest and most northerly subrange of the Coast Mountains, wear a blanket of snow and ice. The tall peaks are home to year-round snow as well as glacier-bearing ice fields. Although generally lower in elevation that the more southerly Coast Mountains, the Boundary Ranges contain several towering peaks, including Mount Ratz at 10,238 ft. (3,090 m), Chutine Peak at 9,547 ft. (2,910 m) and Devils Thumb at 9,077 ft. (2,593 m).

The large Graham Island, part of the Haida Gwaii archipelago, and most of the land east of that island belong to Canada. To the north, the green swath along the coast lies within Alaska’s temperate rain forest which is rich in sitka spruce and western hemlock. As the low-lying coast rises to the peaks of the Boundary Ranges, the land owned by Alaska, United States gives way to British Columbia, Canada.

A discrete area of smoke sits in the southeast section of Canada, while gray streaks extend over much of Alaska, in the west. Additional gray streaks are seen in the north. These streaks, which appear to be smoke, do not appear to have an identifiable source in this image and are likely carried some distance by wind. While the official fire season is near the close in British Columbia and Alaska, several fires continued to burn as September came to a close, especially in Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula where the Swan Lake Fire has consumed 167,164 acres. That fire has reached 90 percent containment on October 1 according to Inciweb yet would still be a significant source of smoke across the region.

Image Facts
Satellite: Aqua
Date Acquired: 9/28/2019
Resolutions: 1km (462.2 KB), 500m (1.4 MB), 250m (6.6 MB)
Bands Used: 1,4,3
Image Credit: MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC