File:Double Trouble for North America (MODIS 2024-08-17).jpg

English: Thick smoke blanketed eastern Canada as an Atlantic hurricane was taking aim at the Canadian Maritimes in mid-August 2024. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite acquired a true-color image of the widespread, wind-borne smoke and approaching storm on August 15.

Thick gray smoke swirls over the provinces of Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. It also stretches southward over parts of the United States, including multiple New England states as well as New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland. Smoke colors the skies off the northern Atlantic coastlines and appears entrained in clouds that stretch far to the east off Canada.

Most of the smoke appears to have blown on strong winds from the ferocious wildfires burning in British Columbia, Alberta, and Northern Territories. Some fires are burning across most of Canada’s provinces, including Newfoundland and Labrador. A few hot spots also show up in Quebec, but it is likely the bulk of the smoke has travelled long-distance on high level winds.

Further south, Hurricane Ernesto was tracking northward as it strengthened, on track to batter Bermuda by August 17 before making a run toward the Canadian Maritimes.

At 8:00 p.m. EDT on August 16 (0000 UTC on August 17), the National Hurricane Center (NHC) advised that the center of Ernesto was about 95 miles (150 km) south-southwest of Bermuda carrying maximum sustained of 100 miles per hour (155 km/h). That places it as a Category 2 storm on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane wind scale. It was traveling to the northeast. It is expected to approach Newfoundland and Labrador on August 19, with the current track forecasting a brush by St. Johns, Newfoundland Island. It will likely carry maximum sustained winds between 80 and 90 miles per hour (129-145 km/h), placing it as a Category 1 storm at that time.

The image is a mosaic, which is created when data from several passes of the instrument are stitched together to permit viewing of a larger area. Lines mark the edges of the adjacent swaths and areas where no data was collected in each swath show up as black. Several parallel silvery-gray streaks are also seen in this image. These are areas of “sunglint,” which is an optical phenomenon that occurs when sunlight reflects from the surface of the Earth directly back at the sensor.