This is the link to the animated satellite image for Pocatello, Idaho and a wide area around it. Click on the link for 1 km animation and watch as the day progresses.Morning finds the many canyons of northern Idaho filled with dense, stable clouds of smoke. Moreover most of Montana is covered with smoke. As the day goes on you will probably see plumes emerge in north central Idaho and Yellowstone Park and the surrounding country. Yesterday, Aug. 12, the tall and long plumes were very impressive by mid-afternoon.
Note some other NWS websites (Missoula?) might work even better.
Update on late Aug. 13. Although they were slow to develop today, the west central Idaho fires eventually put up very large plumes that drifted across the state and over to Montana.
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Ralph Maughan
Dr. Ralph Maughan is professor emeritus of political science at Idaho State University with specialties in natural resource politics, public opinion, interest groups, political parties, voting and elections. Aside from academic publications, he is author or co-author of three hiking/backpacking guides, and he is past President of the Western Watersheds Project.
Here is the animated link for Idaho.
http://sat.wrh.noaa.gov/satellite/loopsat.php?wfo=boi&area=west&type=vis&size=1
The fires here are very bad. The Cascade complex was very active yesterday and overnight and it appears that most of the west/central Idaho fires took a little run to the southeast overnight. The MODIS maps put the fire right in the vicinity of many of the summer homes near Warm Lake and the adult salmon trap there may be at great risk today if the MODIS maps are right. It also appears that most of forest around Stolle Meadows on the South Fork Salmon River has burned. This is a very, very important area for threatened, wild chinook salmon to spawn.
A couple of cabins were lost in Warren yesterday.
Buffaloed,
Bad news indeed because I see prediction is for the fire to burn right down the canyon of the South Fork of the Salmon River 🙁