Frisco, CO next week - Oct 12-16 smoke?
 

Hey all - getting ready to push the button on a condo for a week, but am wondering about air quality because of fires. Knowing we don't have crystal balls, I'd love to now from anyone but especially those from the region, would you go? Thank in advance. Will need to get input pretty quickly, obviously. ;-)

You could be OK. The smoke in that area has not been as heavy as along the front range, In addition, the weekend forecast currently is for a winter storm and the snow would substantially clean the air. The next week should be OK especially if we get the cold and the snow.

We are waiting on a settlement check this am so as soon as it comes, we thought we make a loop through Breck for lunch back via Hooiser pass to see if any color is left. The snow this weekend, if it comes, will strip the color,

This is from our DDIL in Denver whose parents have a house in Frisco. Just asked her so it looks like what fmpden suggests could be the case.

Not great air quality here or in Frisco. Fires seem to be north, but winds are bringing it everywhere.
hoping for better tomorrow!

Hey thanks so much you both! So hard to decide. I wanted to relax and do some photography (not expecting colors). So with snow - crickey I just don't know, although Colorado is beautiful with snow, for sure...

Purpleair shows the air quality as being ok: https://www.purpleair.com/map?opt=1/...4361/-106.6643

Thank you so much for that resource! I’ve been looking at several sites but haven’t really gotten good intel. 👍

Purple air is a good site for close to real time air quality numbers. I'm along the northern Front Range of Colorado and find it to be highly accurate for what I'm seeing and smelling.
This site is also excellent:
https://fire.airnow.gov/

Right now Frisco area looks good, but not Fort Collins.

If there was a winter storm forecast for the mountains, then I don't see it now. Looks like a minor disturbance on Sunday but then sunny all next week. Nowhere near enough to put out the fires and the smoke will be a day by day event, hard to predict. Good luck.

I was up at 10,000' in RMNP yesterday. There is still some color, but it's past peak. Many of the cottonwoods along the rivers are brighter than the aspen. There was some smoke haze but not bad.


https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fod...0ab39a577a.jpg
A nice aspen stand in the area of a 1978 burn

https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fod...a04ba415f5.jpg

Thanks so much. My phone weather app still says air quality advisory for Breckenridge and Frisco. I just don't know what to make of it all. It's so subjective! Beautiful photos. I'm sad I will miss the peak if I go.

Hi Gretchen, I’m now looking at arriving Tuesday. Any chance you could ask your people once more about the air in Frisco? I’m just not sure how to gauge it. Are views completely obliterated? So frustrating. Anyway, if your people on the ground in Frisco wouldn’t mind being asked again, I’d be so grateful! Thank you.

Very distance views might be obliterated but generally it is just a gray haze that hangs in the air much like a light fog. Expecting high winds and little rain/snow over the weekend so that should clean up the air soon. But the problem is that the three big forest fires are north and nw of there so the smoke will be push back into that area later in the week. Till those fires are out, this will be pretty standard.

Hopefully Gretchen's folks will give an update. Are you looking at Mel's report? The second part takes place in late September near the fires. In her excellent photos you can see both smoke and beautiful blue sky.
https://www.fodors.com/community/uni...ummer-1691689/

Here are two forecast sites I've been looking at for the past month or more:
https://fires.airfire.org/outlooks/NorthCentralColorado
https://gispub.epa.gov/airnow/

For the second one click on the "Forecast" tab, then check "Forecast - Tomorrow" for both Monitors and Contours.

Unfortunately my experience is that neither one is terribly accurate, too hard to predict.

Frisco is largely south of the most active fires and the winds are typically from the west, so you could get lucky. No guarantees of course, sometimes it blows back. In the search for a silver lining, a thin smoke layer can create lovely diffused light, the kind studio photographers spend thousands of dollars to get. But hopefully it snows soon and this all goes away. Good luck.

Thanks so much everyone. I’m sure it would be ok, but the longer I agonize over this the more my heart isn’t in it... 😖

From son
I think air quality is pretty good all over. We had ~35 yesterday. Its snowing in Summit County so their AQ is probably pretty darn good (and snow will help put out the fires).

Thanks so much Gretchen. Yesterday morning I finally canceled the trip. I was getting mixed messages from various sources, but I was ready to go, and then read a government report (don’t recall which one, I read too many) and it looked like a lot of wind, on top of everything else. It was ill conceived. I want to plan a better Colorado road trip for next year. Fingers crossed. Cheers all!

Take a look at Mel reports and do it a month earlier to catch the aspens.