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The environment desk at Aspen Public Radio covers issues in the Roaring Fork Valley and throughout the state of Colorado including water use and quality, impact of recreation, population growth and oil and gas development. APR’s Environment Reporter is Elizabeth Stewart-Severy.

Western fires blow smoke into Colorado

Elizabeth Stewart-Severy
/
Aspen Public Radio

Winds pushed smoke from several wildfires in Utah, Arizona and California into the Roaring Fork Valley Thursday. The smoke is likely to stick around Friday as well.

 

 

The state air quality division released models yesterday afternoon that show enormous amounts of smoke are blowing into Western Colorado. This is from the 1,100-acre Brian Head wildfire in southwestern Utah, as well as other fires across the west.

Local air quality monitors showed levels of particulate matter in the air more than tripled over the course of the day, before dissipating in the late afternoon.

 

State health officials said that if visibility is less than five miles, smoke has reached unhealthy levels.

 

“The best thing to do is listen to your body and if you’re feeling impacts, to go inside, shut the windows and take care of yourself,” said Jannette Whitcomb, who monitors air quality for the City of Aspen.

 

Information on pollutants in Aspen’s air can be found at aspenairquality.com.

 

Aspen native Elizabeth Stewart-Severy is excited to be making a return to both the Red Brick, where she attended kindergarten, and the field of journalism. She has spent her entire life playing in the mountains and rivers around Aspen, and is thrilled to be reporting about all things environmental in this special place. She attended the University of Colorado with a Boettcher Scholarship, and graduated as the top student from the School of Journalism in 2006. Her lifelong love of hockey lead to a stint working for the Colorado Avalanche, and she still plays in local leagues and coaches the Aspen Junior Hockey U-19 girls.
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