When meteorologist Adam Dziewaltowski drove to work around sunrise, he could see the telltale sign on the horizon.
“I kind of describe it as a highlighter orange,” he said Thursday of the vivid display.
As smoke rolls into Wyoming, the ashy air puts on a show of burnt orange sunrises and salmon-colored sunsets. While pretty for a picture, dawn and dusk can be some of the worst times for air quality as the ashy air sinks with cooling temperatures.
Cool temperatures are what caused smoky air to blanket Wyoming this week, said Dziewaltowski, a National Weather Service meteorologist based in Riverton.
Wildfires burning across the Pacific Northwest — destroying more than 800 buildings around Spokane, Washington, and creating some of the worst air quality in the world in Portland, Oregon — are putting up a steady supply of soot-filled air.
“The majority of the smoke is coming from Washington and Oregon,” Dziewaltowski said. Satellite images show the feathery plumes drifting across the state. “Everything’s kind of being funneled across the north of us and then kind of swooping back in.”
Then a cold front moved through Wyoming on Monday, he said. “As that cold front came through, the smoke behind it sunk down into the basins.”
The mountains surrounding the basins act like a bowl, holding the smoke in place. “It will just kind of stagnate and stay there,” he said. “So that’s what’s kind of happened the whole week.”
In northwestern Wyoming, smoke crept into the Tetons by early Sunday morning, prompting residents to shut windows and start recirculating indoor air. In addition to bigger fires burning across the Pacific Northwest, the Big Rock Fire, discovered July 31 in eastern Idaho, has consumed more than 2,000 acres and forced the temporary closure of Heise Hot Springs resort, about an hour’s drive west of Victor, Idaho.
Wildfire also forced the weekend closure of Devils Tower National Monument in eastern Wyoming. After the Left Creek Fire flared up Saturday morning about a mile from the monument, the park ordered visitors and employees to evacuate, the Gillette News Record reported. On Sunday afternoon, a second fire, the Newton Fire, started less than 3 miles southeast of Devils Tower. But crews got the fires under control, and Devils Tower reopened Monday.
On Tuesday, firefighters on the other side of the state began battling a new fire burning on the Bridger-Teton National Forest, Bureau of Land Management land and private property in Sublette County. The Bare Fire has grown to about 800 acres, torching in heavy timber northwest of Big Piney. The fire’s cause is undetermined. People can track air quality related to the Bare Fire and get smoke outlook reports for the Pacific Northwest on the federal government’s AirNow fire and smoke map.
The public also can see near real-time monitoring for Wyoming at wyvisnet.com, which is maintained by the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality’s Air Quality Division. The division issued an air quality alert for Wednesday and Thursday. The alert recommended older adults, young children and people with respiratory problems minimize outdoor activities, including exercise. The Wyoming Department of Health also advises everyone to avoid prolonged exposure to poor air quality, the alert said.
Smoke can be tricky to forecast because it depends on how the fires behave, and air quality can fluctuate, Dziewaltowski said. But based on what he can forecast — it’s looking like a rerun of July’s hot and dry weather — hazy skies are likely to persist through the weekend.
