Washington Smoke Blog
If you’re in Oregon or Washington, then you know that a number of fires have been burning, causing evacuation notices and spreading smoke across the region. Here are details about current red flag warnings, smoke in the region, and air quality updates for July 26, 2019.
To see details about current fires in the Washington and Oregon area, see Heavy’s story here.
Air Quality & Smoke Map for Oregon & Washington
An air quality map is available by AirFire.org below or you can view the full map here. You may need to hit the + button on the map to zoom in. Areas marked green have good air quality, yellow is moderate, orange is unhealthy for sensitive groups, red is unhealthy, purple is very unhealthy, dark brown-red is hazardous. This is provided by the Washington Smoke Blog, which is a partnership between state, county, and federal agencies and Indian tribes.
Much of the smoke people are seeing is from the Milepost 97 fire in Oregon.
#GOES17 Visible and CIMSS Natural Color images showed morning smoke dispersion from the ongoing #MP97Fire northeast of Glendale, Oregon: t.co/dSYWiicLiT Visibility was as low as 1/4 mile due to smoke at Sexton Pass KSXT. #ORwx @NWSMedford
You can find more details about the Milepost 97 fire in Heavy’s story here.
Smoke from the Milepost 97 fire is heading in a southern direction, toward Grants Pass and Medford, KDRV reported. If you live in the Grants Pass area, you probably started seeing the smoke on Thursday.
If there’s smoke in your area, try to stay inside as much as you can, KDRV reported. The only mask that helps is an N-95 mask with straps above and below the ears. Blue masks that you get from hardware stores aren’t helpful for smoke, KDRV noted.
An air quality map specifically for Oregon is here. An embedded version is below. Green means good, yellow means moderate, orange is unhealthy for sensitive groups, red is unhealthy, purple is very unhealthy, and dark brown is hazardous. You may need to zoom in or out of the map below or scroll up or down to see the results, depending on your browser.
If the map above is not readily viewable, you can go directly to the full map here.
Red Flag Warnings for Oregon & Washington
Here are current red flag warnings in Washington, provided by MappingSupport.com. You may need to zoom out or zoom in to get more details on the ones issued near your area.
You can also see weather warnings and Inciweb red flag or fire warning notices in Washington and Oregon in Google’s Crisis map at this link or in the map below. Depending on your browser, you may need to click the + sign to zoom into your region.