The largest blaze, the Woodhead Fire, grew to nearly 70,000 acres Monday, forcing the evacuation of about 40 campers and residents in the sparsely populated patchwork of grazing land and National Forest near the Oregon border.
None of the state’s fires compare in size to the megafires ravaging the West Coast, but with resources stretched thin and forecasts calling for continued dry weather, local fire teams were keeping a wary eye on the blazes.
On Tuesday, calm winds slowed the Woodhead Fire’s spread, said Jim Mackensen, a Forest Service spokesman. But, he cautioned, “It’s still chugging away. The winds don’t have to be there, we have such extremely dry conditions that the fire can spread fine on its own.”
Several counties in the state are cloaked in smoke from fires on the coast, prompting the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality to issue warnings about unhealthy air for much of the state.
The air quality remains unhealthy in much of the West.
With massive fires scattered from Los Angeles to near the Canadian border, the entire West Coast is swathed in smoke. Many cities on the coast got some relief Tuesday as winds shifted and the apocalyptic orange skies that loomed over places like San Francisco a week ago faded to a gloomy haze.
But farther inland fires continued to churn out massive clouds of smoke that cloaked much of interior in acrid, hazardous air. The entire state of Oregon is under a smoke advisory through Thursday, warning children, the elderly and people with health conditions to stay inside. Around Portland, several school districts canceled classes Tuesday because of the smoke.
Even the haze on the East Coast is the result of the smoke from all the wildfires out west, said Michael Souza, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Sterling, Va.
Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/15/us/oregon-fires-california.html
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