Flathead smoke coming from Idaho

The Flathead Valley was socked in with smoke Thursday for the first time this summer, and according to the National Weather Service most of it was drifting in from wildfires in Idaho.

“Throughout Idaho there’s a lot of smoke,” meteorologist Marty Whitmore said Thursday morning. “We were in a westerly [wind] flow earlier this week, but now we are in much more of a southwesterly flow.”

There are five fires in Idaho that have exceed 10,000 acres, including the 108,094-acre Beaver Creek Fire and the 131,258-acre Elk Complex.

The only major fire in Northwest Montana, the Damnation Fire, has covered 4,584 acres, but it is burning deep in the Bob Marshall Wilderness 21 miles southeast of Swan Lake.