DENVER — We get it. It's a natural instinct.
When you think of all the smoke that's infiltrated Denver skies all weekend and early this week, your first thought might be to head to the mountains to escape it all.
Some athletes – including maybe some of those just coming back from the Tokyo Olympic games – might be looking for a good escape spot just to sneak in a good outdoor hike or run.
But with this week's smoke, unfortunately, there's no mountain escape option, like usually there is with Denver's ozone-driven pollution. (Someone tell Colin Duffy that this week isn't a good time to practice climbing outdoors.)
This week's smoke originates from a string of huge wildfires in California and along the West Coast. Because heat rises, usually, the bigger the wildfire will create a higher smoke plume.
If a smoke plume goes high enough, it'll reach the jet stream, the narrow ribbon of strong winds that carries along much of our weather.
Because of the massive size of the West Coast fires, this week's wildfire smoke heading our way likely extends up to 20,000 feet or above, which means it'll easily clear any of our highest peaks. In other words, there's no mountain escape to this week's smoky Front Range sky.
Because our winds this week are coming straight from the west (which is our typical wind direction as well, by the way), that smoke is coming straight for us – and above us as well.
So if you're heading to the mountains to try and escape the fire smoke, you'll probably be disappointed. But, we've got a list of places you can go in order to get a break from the smoke.