Smoke from raging Pacific Northwest fires spreads far inland, worsening air quality

Wildfires gripping the Pacific Northwest are making the air far less breathable across the U.S. West, as windy weather transports hazardous particles and haze over multiple state lines.

First responders were working on 16 large fires throughout the Pacific Northwest on Monday, with smoke conditions persisting throughout the region, according to the Northwest Interagency Coordination Center — a logistical hub for the region’s federal and state woodland fire agencies.

About a third of the major active fires across the West are in Idaho, while the greatest total burned acreage is in Oregon, the National Interagency Fire Center said. Montana, Washington state, Utah, Wyoming and California also have large active fires.

The Pacific Northwest was already contending with widespread air quality issues following a smoky weekend, though now areas far away from the rolling conflagrations are facing deteriorating air conditions as well.

“It’s something that the people who live here have kind of gotten used to, but I think their health is affected by it,” Bob Yokelson, an atmospheric chemist at the University of Montana, told The Hill.

“Our activities are curtailed somewhat because of it,” added Yokelson, who is based in Missoula. “So soccer practice and outdoor events and things like that sometimes get cancelled or moved indoors at the last minute.”

Yokelson’s region of Montana, located just east of the Idaho panhandle, has been enduring an influx of smoke predominantly from fires raging in Idaho, but also from those in Washington, Oregon and Western Canada.

“It’s one of the few regions here in the Pacific Northwest where the air hasn’t been getting better over the years,” Yokelson said.

“Climate change and past fuel management are making the fires worse,” he continued, noting that Montana is situated downwind from most Northwest wildfire hot spots.

While Montana is coping with brutal air quality, states from the Midwest to the Mountain West are also bracing for the possible health effects of these fires located hundreds of miles away.

Such pollution comes from fine particulate matter — known as PM 2.5, or particles with a diameter of less than 2.5 microns — which is prominent in wildfire ash and can cause respiratory health issues.  

Colorado’s Department of Public Health and Environment issued a smoke outlook on Monday morning, warning “hazy skies and light to moderate concentrations of smoke are possible in northern and western portions of Colorado.”

Such air quality conditions, according to the agency, would be “due to smoke from out-of-state wildfires.” While no significant public health impacts were expected, the agency advised that sensitive individuals should reduce heavy exertion in areas where smoke is apparent.

In the much more immediate vicinity of the Pacific Northwest blazes, both Seattle and Portland ranked within the top 20 cities worldwide for air pollution levels on Monday, according to the Swiss air quality monitoring app IQAir.

Over the weekend, Seattle briefly achieved the most toxic spot on that list, The Seattle Times reported, adding that air pollution levels appeared to be the worst in almost two years.

Much of Idaho’s northern panhandle was experiencing “unhealthy” air quality levels on Monday, according to the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality’s real-time air monitoring system. Two monitoring stations near the Washington-Oregon border showed levels considered “very unhealthy.”

Unhealthy air quality levels, as defined by the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Air Quality Index, are those that can cause serious health effects for members of sensitive groups. Very unhealthy levels are those come with an increased risk of health effects for everyone, while “hazardous” levels constitute an emergency health warning.

Huge swaths of Montana, Washington state and Oregon, along with the Sierra Nevada and Western Canada, were likewise exhibiting unhealthy air quality on Monday, with some spots exhibiting very unhealthy or even hazardous conditions, according to the EPA’s interactive AirNow air quality map.

Yokelson explained that the full health impact of such conditions on humans is uncertain, as smoke effects can be acute and people experience a lifetime of exposure to pollution.

The smoke is spreading great distances due to a high-pressure weather system that has set in over the Great Basin — the watershed that includes most of Nevada and parts of surrounding states — Frank Flocke, an atmospheric chemist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, told The Hill.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s High-Resolution Rapid Refresh forecast map for “near surface smoke” showed a spinning system on Monday that could move over the next day down through Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska and as far south as Denver.

Such systems, which are common in the summer, cause the air to rotate clockwise and can pick up smoke from California, Oregon and Idaho and carry it down to distant states like Colorado, Flocke said.

“The red plume is going over Cheyenne and then coming to Denver,” said Flocke, who is based in Boulder, Colo. “It’ll probably get pretty bad by tomorrow.”

Among the Pacific Northwest blazes feeding this system is central Oregon’s Cedar Creek Fire, which grew to 86,734 acres on Monday.

While the Cedar Creek Fire has been burning in the wilderness for a month, only on Friday morning did the blaze begin to encroach upon communities, according to the office of Gov. Kate Brown (D), who in response invoked the Emergency Conflagration Act.

But containment of the Cedar Creek Fire plunged to zero percent on Sunday, after strong easterly winds and dry fuel conditions caused the blaze to grow significantly, Oregon’s Office of the State Fire Marshal reported.

Another blaze in northeastern Oregon, the Double Creek Fire, burned 155,297 acres in the Wallowa National Forest as of Monday and was 15 percent contained, according to the National Wildfire Coordinating Group.

Washington’s Bolt Creek and Goat Rocks fires also burned 7,660 acres and 2,842 acres, respectively, as of Monday, the agency reported.

Thirty-four large fires were blazing in Idaho, including the Moose Fire, which burned 125,925 acres. The Ross Fork fire scorched 37,233 acres, Kootenai River Complex 19,708 acres, Patrol Point 16,000 acres and Williams Creek Fire 15,773 acres, the National Wildfire Coordinating Group reported.

While high-pressure weather systems over the Great Basin are regular occurrences of summer, the sources of the smoke — Western wildfires — have increased in intensity in recent years, according to Flocke.

“There are more fires now outside of what was traditionally considered the fire season,” he said, noting that such a shift could potentially be attributed to climate change.

“Now we’re getting more smoke and more often and for longer periods of time because there are more fires and the fire season is extended and is getting more intense,” Flocke added.

Yokelson echoed those sentiments, noting the Pacific Northwest’s forests “evolved with a previous climate that was cooler and wetter.”

“And now that our climate is getting hotter and drier, the forests of the Pacific Northwest may not be the perfectly adapted ecosystem for the new climate anymore,” he said.

“We’re seeing ecosystem change in response to the climate, and the driver of that change — the tool that nature has to get rid of the old ecosystem — is to burn it down.”