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Wildfires clouding air quality

Quality improved over weekend, firefighters hope for better weather in Washington

Wildland fires two states away and in another country have been impacting weather in north-central Montana, with a local sanitarian warning people to be careful about the smoke in the air.

“The biggest thing is, anybody who has lung problems is going to have some concerns because of the particulates in the air, and there’s not a lot we can do about it,” Hill County Sanitarian Clay Vincent said this morning.

Kristen Martin, state air quality meteorologist with the Montana Department of Environmental quality, said this morning that wind and predicted rain should help keep the problem from coming back as badly this week, although that can change quickly.

For the next few days, though, “it looks like we should not reach the level we were at last week,” Martin said.

When smoke is in the air, Vincent said, people should spend as little time as possible outdoors and avoid heavy exertion, especially if they have lung or heart problems.

Smoke from fires in Canada’s Northwest Territories and in the U.S. states of Washington and Oregon have blown to Montana, creating concerns for air quality.

Montana’s Department of Environmental Quality rated the air in and around several Montana cities as “unhealthy” last week especially in the western part of the state, although the rating this morning had flipped, with the air quality at 15 of 17 monitoring stations listed as “good.”

The air quality at Broadus and Birney in the southeast part of Montana was listed as “unhealthy for sensitive groups.”

This part of north-central Montana does not have a DEQ air quality monitoring station, but over the last part of the week and early weekend Great Falls was listed with unhealthy air quality Friday and Saturday.

The monitoring station at Malta at that time listed the air quality as unhealthy for sensitive groups, with the quality dropping to unhealthy late Saturday as winds pushed the smoke eastward.

Martin reported on the DEQ website Sunday that after becoming progressively worse from Wednesday on, the quality improved over Saturday night. Gusty winds in Montana helped blow away accumulated smoke while the amount of smoke coming from fires in Washington dropped off, the website article reports.

While southwest winds may bring more smoke, it is expected to have less of an impact because the smoke that had been in the state has blown out, the article says.

In Washington, weather forecasters and firefighters are hopeful that cooler temperatures and lower wind speeds may help get some control over the fires, and a front expected to move through mid-week is expected to bring rain — but also lightning.

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said that, as of Friday, some 50 fires were burning in the state. A major fire in north-central Washington had grown from 260 square miles Friday to 370 square miles Sunday.

Vincent said that, although this part of Montana does not see air inversions that lock smoke in, if the wind pattern brings the smoke in, it will impact air quality.

If the wind comes from the southwest, it is likely to bring some smoke with it, Vincent said.

“Until that changes or the forest fires change over there, we could get that material coming through over here,” he said.

 

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