Smoke forecast
Where the smoke over Bozeman was, and where the model sends it next. Scrub back 12 hours or forward 48. Every hour shown is a model estimate, not a measurement.
The scale is anchored to visibility, because that is the one reading you can take yourself without trusting a model. Distances are approximate.
The Spanish Peaks read clean to the southwest, about thirty miles out, and the Bridgers hold every gully along the northeast wall of the valley.
The Spanish Peaks have flattened into one blue shape and Sacagawea has lost its detail, though the Bridger ridgeline still separates from the sky.
The Gallatins reduce to a silhouette south of town. The M on the Bridger foothills, about three miles from Main Street, is the furthest thing with texture.
From Main Street the Bridgers are a suggestion, and the benchland east of town, roughly two miles out, disappears into grey.
The M goes. From downtown you lose the mountain faces that frame the entire Gallatin Valley.
Bozeman sits in the Gallatin Valley with fire country on every side. Smoke arrives from central Idaho, western Montana, the Yellowstone country to the south, and from Washington, Oregon, and interior British Columbia on westerly flow that carries it hundreds of miles. Like Missoula, the valley traps what lands in it: clear high-country nights settle cool air into the basin and hold smoke at ground level into the following morning.
The 2017, 2020, and 2021 seasons all produced stretches where the Bridgers were not visible from town for days at a time, and the summer fire season now overlaps almost exactly with the months the valley is most used.
Bozeman is the north end of a corridor of towns that all breathe the same summer air. Livingston sits twenty-six miles east in Paradise Valley, where the wind that scours the town most of the year can also flush smoke out faster than it leaves the Gallatin. Big Sky is forty-five miles south under Lone Peak. Gardiner and West Yellowstone hold the park’s north and west entrances, both deep in valleys that pool smoke overnight the same way Bozeman’s does. When a plume settles over southwest Montana it rarely picks one of these towns, and a bad week in Bozeman usually means a bad week in all of them.
The verdict at the top of this page answers that for Bozeman specifically, and it reads the model over the valley floor rather than the high country. That distinction is worth knowing here: clear high-country nights settle cool air into the Gallatin basin, so the air on Main Street and the air on a ridge above it can be genuinely different on the same morning. Everything shown is a model estimate rather than a measurement at your address.
That is the headline answer above: the clear time, the first stretch of at least six straight hours below the Hazy threshold. Bozeman has a neighbour worth comparing it against. Paradise Valley, twenty-six miles east, is wind country, and the wind that scours Livingston most of the year can flush a plume out faster than it leaves the Gallatin, so a clear time there is not a clear time here, and the difference is the basin.
Bozeman has fire country on every side, which means the honest answer is usually "several places at once." Central Idaho, western Montana, and the Yellowstone country to the south are the near sources; Washington, Oregon, and interior British Columbia feed it from hundreds of miles out on westerly flow. And the valley itself is half the story on any given morning, because it holds what arrived yesterday, so a bad day here does not require anything new to be burning.
The near sources are central Idaho, western Montana, and the Yellowstone country immediately south, close enough that a new start changes the air within a day. The far ones are Washington, Oregon, and interior British Columbia, and that smoke has been in the air long enough to spread thin and arrive aloft. Scrub the timeline backward twelve hours and the direction it came from is visible on the map rather than asserted in a sentence.
The five-day strip above gives the day-by-day read, and the timeline covers forty-eight hours hour by hour. The awkward truth for anyone planning around it is that the fire season now overlaps almost exactly with the months the Gallatin Valley is most used, so "better tomorrow" is a question worth asking every day of August rather than once a summer. Forecasts are sharpest one to two days out and the page shows where the models disagree.
Start with the Spanish Peaks to the southwest, thirty miles out, so they are the first thing to flatten. Then look at whether Sacagawea still has detail and whether the Bridger ridgeline still separates from the sky. The M on the Bridger foothills is the close check from Main Street, and when the M itself goes you have lost the mountain faces that frame the entire valley, which is as clear a reading as any instrument will give you.
Where Bozeman's smoke usually shows up first, and the places that share its air.
Two hundred miles west on the same westerly flow. Smoke that has crossed the Missoula valley is often over the Gallatin by the next day.
The central Idaho fires that reach Bozeman ride the same southwesterly flow through the Treasure Valley on the way.
Out here two separate things decide your air: what arrives, and whether the ground you live on lets it leave.
Smokeshow is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not health, medical, or safety advice. Forecasts are model estimates and can be wrong, sometimes by a lot. Descriptions of what you might smell, see, or feel are generalizations, not predictions about your body. For decisions about your health, outdoor activity, or air quality safety, rely on official sources like AirNow.gov, the National Weather Service, and your local health authorities, and talk to a medical professional about your own situation.