Wildfires Grow, Continued Fire Danger Into Weekend

22 Aug 2020, 5:09 am

Wildfires continue to grow across the southwest as fire danger remains elevated. Two wildfire complexes in California, the LNU and SCU, have expanded with acreage burned in the last several days. They are now two of the top five largest wildfires in recorded history in California.

There are fire weather alerts still across parts of the west as some areas will have gusty winds, very dry conditions, and temperatures climbing in the afternoon. Make sure to be fire weather ready as there’s a possibility new fires could spark and expand in these locations.

Unfortunately, the smoke from some of the largest fires has significantly reduced air quality in places like northern Colorado where Air Quality Alerts continue again throughout the weekend for places like Denver, Fort Collins, and Grand Junction. For those sensitive groups, it remains a good idea to limit your time outdoors!

The smoke forecast across the entire western United States shows the smoke rotating around the upper level high, bringing some of the thickest smokes from California into Nevada and even as far north as Montana. Many areas will continue to have smoke remain in place through Saturday and even into Sunday.

Stay with WeatherNation for the latest updates on the fire weather and smoke forecast throughout the entire weekend!

About the author

Meredith Garofalo

Meredith is a Certified Broadcast Meteorologist as designated by the American Meteorological Society. She was born and raised in Cleveland but has worked from coast to coast covering almost every type of weather. Meredith is a weather, space, and STEM journalist and has been live out in the field during destructive tropical storms on the Gulf Coast of Florida, raging wildfires in Southern Cali... Load Morefornia, and covered the wreckage from tornadoes in the Great Plains. In 2009, she reported on the damaging hail storm during the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally and in 2017, the historic California winter storms that produced record rain totals and devastating flash flooding. Prior to joining WeatherNation, Meredith worked at KEYT/KKFX in Santa Barbara, CA, KOTA-TV in Rapid City, SD, WWSB-TV in Sarasota, FL, and began her career as an intern at WGN-TV in Chicago. She was Santa Barbara's "Favorite Weathercaster of the Year" in 2016 and the Community Partner of the Year in 2017 for her volunteer work with Make-A-Wish Tri-Counties and awarded with the 2018 Valparaiso University Alumni Association First Decade Achievement Award. Meredith is the current chair of the American Meteorological Society's Station Scientist Committee, which focuses on raising greater awareness & outreach when it comes to science education for viewers. She's also an accomplished journalist, producing weather and science stories including rocket launches at Vandenberg Air Force Base and the new GOES-16 satellite and it's impacts on weather forecasting. Meredith was personally invited by NASA's Johnson Space Center to interview astronauts on the International Space Station and was the only meteorologist in the nation to do an exclusive report accompanying the GOES-West satellite from Colorado to Florida, reporting on and covering it's launch in 2018. Meredith's also worked on features that took her paragliding along the coast, white water rafting in Northern California, learning to surf in the Pacific Ocean, and how to be an aerial photographer while flying a single engine plane!

Wildfires Grow, Continued Fire Danger Into Weekend

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