Hazy Skies Due to West Coast Wildfires
September 17, 2020 7:00AM CDT
Rangers have set a small-scale, controlled fire in a forest in Tuolumne Meadows, Yosemite National Park, to prevent wildfires from spreading.
(Jefferson County) Ongoing wildfires across the west coast are generating a thick layer of smoke aloft and that is being carried by the prevailing westerlies, traveling thousands of miles away, and filling the skies over Missouri.
Thomas Spriggs is a Meteorologist with the National Weather Service in St. Louis. We asked him how the smoke will affect our weather.
Air quality is expected to remain the same even with the smoke above.
Other than hazy skies, the smoke particles will bring intensified colors to evening sunsets due to the smoke scattering/reflecting the suns light differently.
The fires out west have scorched more than 4.7 million acres in California and Oregon, killing at least 36 people in those two states.
