Wind Shift May Transport New Mexico Wildfire Smoke Into Colorado By Wednesday

DENVER (CBS4) - Large wildfires burning in New Mexico continue to put a massive amount of smoke into the atmosphere. In some cases the plumes are so big that you can see them on visible satellite imagery.

Persistent westerly winds have kept most of that smoke away from Colorado but that may change overnight Tuesday into Wednesday. Some computer forecast models show a strong push of southerly winds developing at the surface by sunrise on Wednesday. If that happens we could see smoke from these fires transported due north into portions of central and eastern Colorado.

In addition to the possibility of wildfire smoke we could also see areas of blowing dust with this next round of strong and gusty wind. Warm temperatures and low relative humidity will push the fire danger to critical levels for a large part of Colorado on Wednesday.

If you suffer from respiratory ailments and are sensitive to problems with the air quality you may want to plan on being indoors as much as possible during the day on Wednesday. As of this posting there are no air quality alerts in effect across Colorado but that could change over the next 24 hours.