UPDATE 10:59 a.m. — No one is safe from the haze. The Colorado health department issued an air quality health advisory for the entire state, saying smoke is arriving from multiple sides of the state. It lingers through tomorrow morning at least.
9 a.m. Aug. 8 — Early August brings record-breaking heat and fire haze to large swaths of Colorado, from the northern mountains down into the Denver Metro.
Summit County on Monday. Aug. 3, hit 87 degrees Fahrenheit. That breaks a high-temperature record from 1944.
Denver hit 102 degrees, breaking a record that stood since 1878. At 8 p.m. last night temperatures in Grand Junction were still hovering around 100 degrees.
One day earlier, on Sunday, Aug. 2, Summit just barely fell short of breaking the record, of 85 degrees, from 2024. According to the temperature gauge at the Krystalized weather center on the shores of Lake Dillon, we smashed the record. It read 88 degrees on Sunday.
Haze returns
Sunday was also the first day of fire haze after several weeks of afternoon rain and blessedly clear skies.
“Wildfire smoke has made a return after a few weeks of relatively good air quality across northwestern Colorado,” the state’s air quality blog read yesterday. “With the upper-level winds shifting over the next 24 hours, it is possible that Colorado could be contending with a prolonged stretch of wildfire smoke conditions this week.
As fires billow and grow in Utah, Nevada and the Pacific Northwest, those upper-level winds are bringing thick smoke to Colorado.
Starting today, 25 counties have an Air Quality Health Advisory from the state department of public health. That includes Summit, Leadville and the Vail area, along with Fort Collins, Greeley and all of northwestern Colorado. Most of southern Colorado is spared today.
Air quality in Summit this morning is in the orange and red on PurpleAir, meaning folks with lung, heart and other preexisting issues might feel sick today. Follow this guidance from the state on how to avoid the worst of haze health issues.