Smoke forecast
Where the smoke over Salt Lake City 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.
Twin Peaks and the Wasatch crest read sharp to the southeast, and the Oquirrhs hold their ridgeline about fifteen miles west across the valley.
The Oquirrhs have gone flat and grey, and the canyons in the Wasatch have lost their shadows.
The Oquirrhs disappear. The Wasatch front reduces to a silhouette four miles east with no canyon detail at all.
From Liberty Park the downtown towers hold two miles north, while the mountains behind them vanish.
The top of the Wells Fargo Center goes. From the Avenues you can lose the valley floor below you.
Salt Lake sits in a bowl between two ranges, which is the whole story. Smoke arrives from California, Nevada, Oregon, and Idaho on westerly and southwesterly flow, and once it is in the valley the mountains keep it there. The city already has a winter inversion problem for the same geographic reason, so the mechanism is familiar even when the source is new.
The 2020 and 2021 seasons put Salt Lake among the worst air quality in the world on multiple days, and the 2021 summer in particular ran long stretches where the Oquirrhs were not visible from downtown.
Salt Lake's winter inversion is the same trapping mechanism as summer smoke and a completely different pollutant. Cold air settles into the valley, caps it, and holds local emissions at ground level for days. It looks identical from the Avenues. The season tells you which one you are in: inversions run December through February, smoke runs July through September.
The verdict at the top of this page answers that for Salt Lake specifically, and it answers the smoke question rather than the haze question. Those come apart here twice a year: a capped valley in January looks identical from the Avenues to a capped valley in August, and only one of them is smoke. The section above on what is not smoke covers it. 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. A bowl between two ranges is slow to give that up. Once smoke is in this valley the mountains keep it there, so the clear time is usually a forecast about the bowl emptying rather than about the flow off the Sierra turning, and 2021 ran long stretches where it did not empty at all.
If it is July through September, the likely answer is smoke from California, Nevada, Oregon, or Idaho on westerly and southwesterly flow, held in the valley by the ranges on either side. If it is December through February, the same trapping mechanism is holding local emissions instead and nothing is burning. Salt Lake residents already know the mechanism from winter; the summer version just changes what is in the air.
California, Nevada, Oregon, and Idaho, arriving on westerly and southwesterly flow across the Great Basin. Reno is the upwind check on the Sierra cases and Sacramento on the northern California ones, both linked below. Once it is here the source stops mattering much, because the bowl treats all of it the same way. Run the timeline backward on the map to see which door it came in.
The five-day strip above gives the day-by-day read and the timeline covers forty-eight hours hour by hour. In a valley that holds what it is given, the five-day view is the one worth reading. 2020 and 2021 both put Salt Lake among the worst air quality in the world on multiple days, and those were not single-day events. Forecasts are sharpest one to two days out and the page shows the spread.
Look west across the valley at the Oquirrhs, about fifteen miles out. They are the far check and they go first, while Twin Peaks and the Wasatch crest are still readable to the southeast. Then whether the Wasatch canyons still have shadows in them. When the Wasatch front is a silhouette four miles east with no canyon detail, it is well in. From the Avenues, losing the valley floor below you is the bottom.
Where Salt Lake City's smoke usually shows up first, and the places that share its air.
The westerly and southwesterly flow that fills the Salt Lake bowl crosses the Truckee Meadows first, straight off the Sierra crest.
Northern California smoke bound for Utah pools in the Central Valley before it rides east over the Great Basin.
This is the corridor where the haze is not always smoke, and saying so is most of the job.
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.