Wildfires sparked by thousands of lightning strikes devastate California neighborhoods
Fox News senior correspondent Claudia Cowan reports from Vacaville with an update.
Wildfires across western states have generated enough smoke that, even as far as Utah, residents experienced ‘smoky’ air, according to national forecasts.
The National Weather Service (NWS) tweeted that smoke from dozens of wildfires currently burning across California and Nevada will spread east, creating a thin level of haze.
The effect would be “noticeable” by Friday morning, according to the NWS.
Kevin Eubank, meteorologist at KSL-TV in Utah, said the smoke will likely linger across most of the state for a couple of days.
“Air quality has already deteriorated to moderate levels almost everywhere,” Eubank said. “Unlike in a valley inversion where the low valleys see the worst pollution, when you’re dealing with smoke, the smoke comes from the upper-level air.”
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“That smoke gets filtered all the way into Logan and the Cache Valley, Heber Valley and over the mountains. It’s really a valley problem.”
Hundreds of thousands of acres in California have been burning, forcing evacuations and taxing the states' already overextended firefighting resources. Additional fires across the Four Corners and desert Southwest also prompted air-quality alerts, the Washington Post reported.
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Air-quality alerts were in effect for much of California on Thursday, where pollutants reportedly could cause “serious health problems, aggravate lung disease, cause asthma attacks and acute bronchitis, and increase risk of respiratory infections,” according to the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District.
