Fires and smoke in the southeast, what gives?

[Qxxx]

I ran across this website showing smoke patterns in the US. If you click on both "Near Surface Smoke" and "Fire Detections", you can see both where fires are burning and also the smoke patterns they are generating. We generally think about wild fires in the far west, but this shows there are currently 100 or so fires from Texas to Georgia generating a lot of smoke in local areas.

What's going on here? 
https://hwp-viz.gsd.esrl.noaa.gov/smoke/

 

[Kaylee]

"Burn the Land, Boil the Sea, you can't take the Sky from me."

 

[Matlock]

"Burn the Land, Boil the Sea, you can't take the Sky from me."

Isn't that what the Pterodactyl said to the Brachiosaurus awhile back?

 

[WanderingRose]

Controlled brush fires, possibly?

I have recently passed a couple of whoppers, in rural areas.

It’s legal in many parts of the country to do this, tho not allowed in most cities.

 

[maki2]

You must be assuming that lighting does not strike trees in the woods in Eastern USA
or that people don't have campfires that get out of control
Or that people don't clear cut commercial timber land and then burns the slash so that new trees can be planted
Or that no one burns off the leftover stalks of summer crops before the fall crops are planted

too early for burning fall leaves

Last month the air quality in Seattle was bad because of smoke from Alaska and Siberia. The winds aloft move smoke long distances.

 

[Qxxx]

I was just surprised there were so many fires concentrated just in that area. Very few in the rest of the country, except the far west.

 

[lenny flank]

It's really not unusual this time of year. It's the dry season and the Southeast is the lightning capitol of the world. When I lived in Florida, we had grass fires all the damn time.

 

[CityWoman]

Remember Gatlinburg!

 

[Qxxx]

Speaking of lightning, this website is kind of cool. You can blow up an area, see where the strikes are happening in real-time, plus turn on sound and hear every time a bolt strikes.

https://www.lightningmaps.org/

Sound and vision wins the day.