Summit County and most the Colorado Front Range is coated in haze today. For the first time all summer the National Weather Service put “smoke” in its local forecast for Dillon.
But where’s it coming from?
The good news: It is not coming from wildfires in Colorado.
There were several small fires over the weekend, to our east in Clear Creek County and south into Chaffee County, but none erupted into larger fires.
No, this haze is coming from dozens of fires in Canada and the Pacific Northwest, especially Oregon, where the Statesman Journal confirms 81 fires are burning statewide today. The Oregon fires have burned over a half-million acres.
NOAA smoke radar shows plumes of smoke billowing in the mountains just east of Portland and Eugene. Today’s haze is the worst in Bend, Oregon and parts of Boise, Idaho. The U.S.-Canadian boundary in Montana is severely impacted.
Up into Canada, giant swaths of British Columbia and Alberta are coated in wildfire smoke. That smoke is drifting all the way into Nebraska and Kansas.
The largest wildfire in Colorado today is the Crowder Ranch Incident east of Trinidad in Las Animas County. It has burned nearly 500 acres since July 15.