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Smoke from the wildfires burning in the northwestern corner of California spread to the San Francisco Bay Area on Thursday evening, and residents woke up to hazy skies on Friday morning.
The National Weather Service said most of the smoke hangs in the middle levels of the atmosphere and less near the surface. The sky may appear hazy, but the Bay Area Air Quality Management District has said smoke at higher elevations is not causing unhealthy and widespread air quality levels.
“The smoke is still in the air right now,” said Aaron Richardson, spokesperson for the management district. “We think it’s above 2,000 feet. We can see smoky skies in parts of the Bay Area, but we don’t expect the air quality to be worse than moderate. . “
Smoke is expected to be thickest in Napa, Sonoma and Solano counties, and similar conditions with moderate air quality are forecast for Saturday.
Wildfires have ravaged California in recent months, but the San Francisco Bay Area has been largely untouched by the toxic smoke the fires have produced.
That changed on Thursday with a change in wind and sooty air moving south along the coast, the National Weather Service said.
Weather Service meteorologist Drew Peterson said the smoke will likely be light, with hazy conditions throughout Friday.
“We can’t rule out that people sometimes smell like smoke and that it might seem hazy,” Peterson said. “It won’t be what it looked like that day the sky turned orange last year. Today will probably be the foggiest day.”
The smoke comes from three forest fires that burn in the northwest of the state. The monument fire that began on July 30 burned 36,015 acres in Trinity County. The McFarland Fire started on July 29 and ravaged 26,598 acres in western Shasta County. The River Complex Fire is a cluster of fires in the Klamath National Forest in Siskiyou County discovered after a series of thunderstorms swept through the area. The series of fires ignited on July 30 and burned 16,773 acres.
“We are still trying to determine what the impacts of these fires will be, but at this point we find that we are not going to see smoke at the same level as last year when the smoke was so bad,” he said. he adds. Richardson said.
Latest updates on California wildfires
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