The number of active Red Flag Warnings and fire weather alerts nationwide fell to 39 Saturday, down sharply from the 68 alerts spanning 14 states a day earlier, even as wildfire smoke pushed new air quality health advisories into the Northeast and mid-Atlantic. Alerts are now tied to nine states — Colorado, Washington, Oregon and Ohio, plus advisory-driven alerts in the District of Columbia, Maine, New Jersey, New York and Vermont.
In the Pacific Northwest, the National Weather Service kept Red Flag Warnings active across Washington’s Colville Reservation, Okanogan Valley, Methow Valley, the Cascade foothills, the Waterville Plateau and the Western Columbia Basin, citing west winds of 10 to 20 mph gusting to 35 mph combined with relative humidity as low as 13 percent. Similar warnings covered the Lower Columbia Basin of Oregon and the Lower Palouse-Snake River region, where gusts up to 30 mph and humidity as low as 14 percent raise the risk of rapid fire spread with any new ignition.
Colorado now carries the largest share of the alert count. Twenty-five counties, including Mesa, Garfield, Delta, Eagle, Grand, Summit, Pitkin, Gunnison, El Paso and Pueblo, remain under an Air Quality Health Advisory for wildfire smoke issued by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. That marks a shift from a day earlier, when the story was almost entirely about fire-weather risk of new ignitions; the advisory instead addresses smoke already in the air across the Western Slope and Front Range.
The clearest sign of the smoke’s reach east is in Ohio, where 15 counties around the Cincinnati and Dayton corridor — Darke, Shelby, Miami, Clark, Preble, Montgomery, Greene, Dearborn, Boone, Kenton, Campbell, Butler, Warren, Hamilton and Clermont — are under advisory conditions, alongside active alerts tracked to National Weather Service offices in the District of Columbia, Maine, New Jersey, New York and Vermont. That footprint shows drifting wildfire smoke has become as much a concern on the East Coast as fire danger itself is in the West.
The National Weather Service notes the underlying pattern driving the Western alerts hasn’t changed: strong winds, low humidity and dry fuels remain the trigger for rapid fire spread, while smoke transport is now the governing factor farther east. A Red Flag Warning, the agency says, means critical fire weather conditions are occurring or expected shortly, and that the combination of wind, low humidity and warmth can support extreme fire behavior. With the pattern holding into the weekend, fire weather is expected to persist across Colorado, Washington and Oregon through Saturday, while the extent of smoke advisories farther east will depend on where the plume tracks next.