{"id":21470,"date":"2025-07-11T12:58:30","date_gmt":"2025-07-11T18:58:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/three-wildfires-create-smoky-skies-across-southwest-colorado\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T22:06:49","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:06:49","slug":"three-wildfires-create-smoky-skies-across-southwest-colorado","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/three-wildfires-create-smoky-skies-across-southwest-colorado\/","title":{"rendered":"Three wildfires create smoky skies across Southwest Colorado"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=2fac225c-3459-5013-aff1-e9dbf286d8f1&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"2000\" height=\"892\" alt=\"Durango-area residents woke up to smoky conditions Friday, likely the result of three wildfires burning in the region, according to the National Weather Service. (Shane Benjamin\/Durango Herald)\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">Durango-area residents woke up to smoky conditions Friday, likely the result of three wildfires burning in the region, according to the National Weather Service. (Shane Benjamin\/Durango Herald)<\/span><span class=\"credit\">cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><p>Three wildfires were likely to blame for the smoky conditions Friday across Southwest Colorado, according to the National Weather Service in Grand Junction.<\/p>\n<p>One of those fires was the Deer Creek Fire in the La Sal Mountains, southeast of Moab near the Utah-Colorado line, which had grown to 4,000 acres as of Friday morning.<\/p>\n<p>The South Rim Fire near Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park was reported at 1,640 acres, while the Sowbelly Fire west of Delta was reported at 300 acres.<\/p>\n<p>The smoke blanketing much of Southwest Colorado is largely from those fires, said Lucas Boyer, meteorologist with the National Weather Service.<\/p>\n<p>He said northwest winds were pushing the smoke into Durango and surrounding areas. He expected the conditions to persist through the weekend.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI would suspect we\u2019re going to be looking at smoke here for the next several days,\u201d he said Friday.<\/p>\n<p>The fires sent smoke into the upper atmosphere Thursday, which is likely to keep occurring during daytime fire activity. As temperatures cool at night, the smoke settles into the lower elevations.<\/p>\n<p>Thursday was a red-flag warning day with low humidity, hot temperatures and strong winds. Friday was not a red-flag warning day, because the winds settled, Boyer said.<\/p>\n<p>The air quality in Durango was considered \u201cunhealthy for sensitive groups\u201d as of Friday morning.<\/p>\n<p>Tony Heard with Durango Interagency Fire Dispatch said sensitive groups include anyone with heart and lung problems, older adults and young children, and the air quality could cause issues to anyone planning a hike.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf you\u2019re going to be out and about with the smoke, it\u2019s recommended you shorten your time outdoors and keep kind of monitoring it,\u201d he said. \u201cThe smoke will stick around, probably for a while, just due to the airflow that\u2019s coming down right now.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The smoke will appear heavier in the mornings and the evenings and lighten slightly midday, but still be prevalent.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen it\u2019s a little bit cooler, that smoke just kind of likes to lay down in lower-lying valleys,\u201c he said. \u201dDuring the day, it pops up with the daytime heating, and then back when it\u2019s night time again.\u201c<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Conditions likely to linger through the weekend, meteorologists say<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21471,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,88,84],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-21470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-weather-news","tag-wildfire"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21470"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21470\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77325,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21470\/revisions\/77325"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21470"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=21470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}