You're listening to shortwave from MPR.

For over a week, flames burning out of control.

Wildfires have raged through the western United States.

Just the North Bay fires burning in parts of Santa Clara County and the East Bay along

with Santa Cruz and Mateo counties, that's a CZU fire.

With more than a million acres already on fire and dangerously limited resources, some

firefighters are bracing for catastrophic consequences.

In multiple states, these are some of the largest fires we've ever seen.

And the Pine Gulch Fire, north of Grand Junction, is now burning an area of the size of Colorado

Springs.

It happened suddenly overnight when it jumped to become the second largest wildfire in

state history.

There are at least 10 wildfires burning across our state.

And all of that fire is leading to some states out west seeing alarming drops in air quality.

I've been checking all the monitors and many of them are just off the charts, certainly

well into the unhealthy range.

Jessica Gilman's an atmospheric chemist for NOAA, out in Boulder, Colorado.

I have a dark blue Jeep parked in my driveway and you can see the ash and the dust kind of

starting to build up on the cars.

Lately, she's been studying how the pandemic has affected air quality with lots of people

staying at home.

So now we got everything up and running to try to look at the air quality impacts.

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