I called the Minden-Tahoe airport, which is the headquarters for the search. The secretary was very appreciative, and meticulously took notes. She seemed most interested that the timing was right. I e-mailed her the details too.
It seems that they are searching in an area south of my suspected smoke plume, so I'm not sure if they'll use the tip or not, but they certainly know about it.
I'm just curious, has anyone else looked at the animation (not my animated Gif) on the satellite web site? An Nicolas points out, it could be a lot of things. Does it look like a short-lived smoke plume to anyone else?
More carefully counting the pixels, my percieved plume is on the red dot in this Google Earth image:
http://orbitsimulator.com/misc/sf4.GIF