The 1950s abstract impressionist art movement, as typified by the works of Jackson Pollock, featured chaotic swirls, blobs, and streaks in multitudinous colors and shapes. The above image hanging in a modern art gallery might draw some compliments, followed by consternation when noted that the "artist" was named AB1 GOES: the Advanced Baseline Imager on NOAA's GOES 16 satellite. The "canvas" was centered on the Canadian provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba (with eastern British Columbia on the left and Hudson Bay on the right edges). Taken on July 16, 2021, it portrays massive plumes of smoke from wildfires burning across much of western Canada. The white "blotches" in the center include 10 pyrocumulonimbus (pyroCb) cloud anvils, the most seen in North America in any single day since satellite tallies began in 2013. The pall of smoke came in part from the Sparks Lake fire in British Columbia, which had burned an area larger than the state of Georgia, and birthed a monster pyroCb that reached 52,000 feet while uncorking 113,000 lightning strikes (nearly 5% of Canada's annual average.).
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