Verde Valley residents awoke on the morning of Tuesday, Sept. 8 to see … nothing. The normally clear Northern Arizona skies that usually allow residents to see for miles and miles were marred by a white haze, the residue of 22 wildfires in California and 10 other Western states away from the Verde Valley, swept by Santa Ana winds several hundred miles to hover in the air above us.
“The smoke is primarily from fires in California and Colorado, but Arizona and Utah fires could contribute in the coming days as well,” Ken Daniel, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service’s Flagstaff office, wrote in an email. “As numerous fires continue to churn, and the atmosphere continues to mix, it’s becoming even harder and harder to separate the individual sources.”
Though the rest of the week was notably clearer than the white haze last Tuesday, meteorologists stress that with the fires in other states not yet abating, the smoke could be back soon.