Occasional smoke impacts set to continue on Monday

Looking across Colorado this morning on EPA's Fire and Smoke Map, there are large differences in air quality from place to place.

Air quality conditions vary widely across Colorado Monday morning (fire.airnow.gov)

Moderate to heavy smoke impacts are currently being felt in communities such as Edwards, Aspen, Edwards, and Silverthorne.  The heaviest smoke is being reported in the valleys of Grand County, where Highway 40 is a smoky drive from Winter Park northward through Fraser and Granby to the shores of Grand Lake.

In contrast, smoke has cleared out for the moment in Grand Junction, Montrose, Gunnison, Buena Vista, and also for much of the Denver metro area. The advice for these areas is to open up your windows and let the clean air in while you have it. Because things could go downhill again later today.

Early morning satellite imagery reveals three very large fires in southwestern Colorado and southeastern Utah.

GOES-19 Band 7 satellite imagery shows "hot spots" at large wildfires in the Four Corners region (slider.cira.colostate.edu)

These fires will likely intensify again Monday afternoon and evening. Smoke impacts are obviously expected in areas very close to the fires, but smoke will be transported downwind to the northeast and east-northeast. So although the air quality might be fine now in your neighborhood, be prepared for sudden changes Monday afternoon and evening. Air quality advisories and alerts reflect the large area that could be impacted by smoke today. For those that have been tracking our advisories over the weekend, note that some areas to the north (Rio Blanco, Moffat, Routt and Jackson counties) have been removed from the advisory as fire activity upwind from those areas has decreased somewhat. But do realize that the advisory footprint could expand again later today depending on fire activity and other factors that are unknown at this point.