BOZEMAN – Another day with horrible wildfire smoke for SW Montana. Unfortunately, this pattern is likely through the end of the week. At times air quality will be unhealthy and sometimes it will be rated as moderate.
The Montana Department of Environmental Quality continues an air quality alert for most of Western and SW Montana. Gallatin and Park counties are no longer included in the alert but thick wildfire smoke continues to blanket the entire region.
There is no pattern change in the short term forecast to scrub out this wildfire smoke, however, there is a pattern change coming this weekend. By Saturday an upper-level Low will dig down into Montana producing cooler temperatures and a NW flow aloft. This should help scrub out some if not all of the wildfire smoke.
The weekend pattern should produce a little rain as well so plan on a fall-like weekend weather pattern.
The other big weather news for today is how slow Hurricane Sally is moving in the Gulf of Mexico. Gulf coast states will see flooding rainfall because this storm is barely moving at 2 mph Tuesday afternoon. It’s spinning off the coast of Alabama and should make landfall Wednesday and slowly spin to the NE reaching Atlanta by Thursday.
