Smoke still hanging around, especially in the north

It looks to be much of the same today with the greatest smoke impacts over the Panhandle and south to Grangeville. There will be lesser impacts over south-central and eastern Idaho, while the southwest looks to receive the lowest air quality values, though they are still inflated due to regional smoke. The highest values should be expected within the valleys and drainages from the Canadian border within the Purcell Trench and south along the western border of ID/WA into the Clearwater drainages into the Palouse. Once again, smoke over the Central Idaho Mountains will move east, but should miss Salmon this afternoon and stay to the south; however this evening smoke is expected to drain into the Salmon-Challis regions. Expect smoke to lift in the afternoon and settle back down once evening comes.

This evening, expect smoke to stay within the Salmon River drainages and west to Riggins. There look to be local nighttime impacts in the vicinity of McCall. The Panhandle will also be heavily impacted this evening with smoke settling within the Purcell Trench down into Spokane while the Clearwater looks to experience lesser impacts.

This model is forecasting smoke to impact the Central Idaho Mountains and the northern Magic Valley as well as locally high concentrations over the Panhandle.

HRRR-Smoke: Near surface smoke forecast initialized 06 UTC 08/16/2018 and valid 18 UTC (12pm MDT) 08/16/2018. Data Source: NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory