If you smell smoke outside today in San Francisco, it's not your imagination. But it is blowing in from hundreds of miles up the coast.
We've been relatively lucky so far this fire season in the Bay Area, but it's far from over yet. The Bay Area Air Quality Management District issued an air quality advisory for Tuesday and Wednesday due to drifting wildfire smoke from far northern California and southern Oregon.
The particulate matter in the air is not expected to exceed national health standards or prompt a Spare the Air alert, officials said, but it may cause hazy skies and the smell of smoke — which is indeed present in SF right now.
Still, the air district is recommending keeping windows closed if the smell of smoke is present, and to switch air conditioners to re-circulate mode, if you own an air conditioner.
Some of these fires to our north, like the SRF Lightning Complex fire (27,573 acres) and Smith River Complex fire (92,180 acres), have been burning for over month, having been sparked by lightning storms in mid-August. They are burning in forests on both sides of the Oregon border and across multiple NorCal counties, including Trinity, Siskiyou, Del Norte, and Humboldt.
The smoke map below shows where the fires are, and shows how much of the San Francisco Peninsula is showing yellow for "moderate" air quality impact.
Get air quality updates over the next 24 hours here.