U.S. Air Quality

Unhealthy to Hazardous PM2.5 AQI Levels in the Pacific Northwest due Wildfire Smoke

Wildfires continue to burn in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Wyoming and Montana, with smoke extending from the Pacific Northwest across much of Wyoming, eastern Utah and Colorado before being steered south across the central plains and into central Texas. Below today's MODIS Aqua AOD and "true color/rgb" images for the Pacific Northwest which showing the remnant and new smoke over this region. This smoke is impacting the air quality in Oregon (Sisters Forest Service), Washington (Wenatchee) and Idaho (Salmon) as shown in the PM2.5 timeseries, with concentrations ranging from 100 to 1110 ug/m3 (Unhealthy to Hazardous AQI). Lidar observations in Baltimore show a very lite smoke layer around 6 km. Clouds advected throughout most of our observations, with the boundary layer reaching heights around 1.75 km.