The AirNow Fire and Smoke Map provides information that you can use to help protect your health from wildfire smoke. See the User's Guide to learn more about Using the Map New in 2022: Enhanced information display including recommended actions and PM2.5 trends. Mention of trade names or commercial products does not constitute EPA or USFS endorsement or recommendation for use. If there is a wildfire in your area, please stay tuned to local authorities for the latest information on fire and smoke safety.ĮPA will not use the data on this map to make regulatory decisions. The data on the AirNow Fire and Smoke Map are intended to help individuals make decisions to protect their health during fires.
#Lake tahoe fire update
The EPA and USFS will update the map layers several times during year, as we respond to feedback and work to improve the map. While these sensors don’t meet the rigorous standards required for regulatory monitors, they can help you get a picture of air quality nearest you especially when wildfire smoke is in your area. The shutdown officially begins at midnight on Tuesday.Ī National Weather Service red-flag warning for dangerously gusty winds and extremely low humidity was posted for the Tahoe area through Wednesday night.Fire and Smoke Map: The EPA and USFS have created this map to test new data layers of use during fire and smoke events, including air quality data from low-cost sensors. The Forest Service has closed all 18 national forests in California to the public through mid-September, an extraordinary measure the agency has taken only once before - during last year's catastrophic fire season. Forest Service officials have described ferocious fire behavior seen across the region as unprecedented. More than 6,800 wildfires large and small have blackened an estimated 1.7 million acres (689,000 hectares) within California alone this season, stretching available firefighting forces and equipment dangerously thin. The blazes have been stoked by extremely hot, dry conditions that experts say are symptomatic of climate change. Only the Dixie fire, which has charred 771,000 acres (312,000 hectares) farther north in the Sierra, has engulfed more territory this year than Caldor.īoth fires are among nearly two dozen raging across California and scores of others elsewhere in the West, during a summer fire season shaping up as one of the most destructive on record. The area also is home to world-class ski resorts.Īs of Tuesday, nearly 4,000 personnel and a squadron of over two dozen water-dropping helicopters were assigned to the blaze, whose cause remained under investigation.
Smoke and soot from the fire has choked the usually pristine skies around Lake Tahoe for days, leading to an early exit by many tourists from a region renowned for its swimming, boating, hiking and camping. Three firefighters and two civilians were injured in recent days.
Winds gusting with cyclone force to 45 miles per hour hurled embers up to a mile beyond the leading edge of the blaze, igniting spot fires as hillsides of trees exploded in towering flames.Īt least 669 structures were listed as destroyed on Tuesday, most of them single-family homes, with 34,000 more buildings considered threatened, Cal Fire spokesman Henry Herrera said. Firefighters had managed to carve containment lines around just 16% of its perimeter. WIND-DRIVEN FLAMESīy Tuesday, the fire had charred more than 191,000 acres (77,300 hectares) of drought-parched forests, some 14,000 acres (5,665 hectares) more than the day before.
#Lake tahoe fire full
Hodge told Reuters he packed a pair of guitars and amplifiers, ski equipment, golf clubs, a hamper full of clothes and a bottle of bourbon into his 1995 sedan, waited for traffic to abate and drove out in the afternoon as ash and soot rained down. "For an older person, it was really unsettling," the 65-year-old said Tuesday at a Red Cross shelter in the town of Truckee, northwest of Tahoe. Police going door-to-door showed up at his South Lake Tahoe apartment. Jeff Hodge, a semi-retired banker who works part-time during the ski season as a chair-lift operator, recalled the dread and uncertainty he felt in the hours leading up to his evacuation Monday. Walsh said the direction of the wind was such that "we're not expecting it to push (the fire) toward the lake this evening." Forest Service spokeswoman Dana Walsh told Reuters by phone Tuesday evening. "There is a substantial amount of resources right now dedicated to protecting the homes and property in South Lake Tahoe,” U.S. Two large spot fires crept to within 3 miles of South Lake Tahoe's city limits on Tuesday, and within 6 miles of the southern shore of Lake Tahoe itself, fire authorities said. An estimated 50,000 people are under evacuation orders due to the Caldor blaze, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire).
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