Posted by Jan Wondra | Jul 12, 2021
The sun rose this Monday morning as it has for the past few days in an unnatural hue, an orange-red muddied at the edges by a haze that stretched from the peaks on all sides of the Arkansas River Valley, a smoky blanket that originated hundreds and thousands of miles away. The normally pristine peaks and clear blue sky were masked by the other-worldly colors of a planet that is changing.
Hundreds of wildfires are burning across the west, including in the normally cool and rainy Pacific Northwest. Image courtesy of Unsplash.
The culprit of this morning’s phenomena: wildfires here in the West have begun months earlier than the normal fall fire season; smaller fires in Routt County near Steamboat Springs, and massive fires further west and north: more than three-quarters of a million acres burning in northern California, Oregon, and Washington state, and more than 300 fires in normally cool and misty British Columbia. That high-level smoke is following the jet stream south and eastward.