Smoke in Missoula on Monday Was Worst in Over a Decade, Just Another Day for Seeley Lake

While the country was off Monday celebrating Labor Day, most folks in Missoula County were trapped in their homes laboring to breathe. Missoula County Air Quality Specialist Sarah Coefield explains how bad it was.

"In Missoula we hit hazardous air quality for several hours, we ticked up in that hazardous level multiple times," Coefield said. "The highest one we were able to read on our meter was 471 micrograms per cubic meter, which is very bad, definitely hazardous."

The city of Missoula is hit by wildfire smoke nearly every year, but it hasn’t seen a day that bad in over a decade.

'We haven't seen numbers like that for the one-hour exposure in Missoula since 2000, when we exceed it for a day, then in 2003 we experienced something similar... so it's been a long time since we've seen smoke that bad in the Missoula Valley," Coefield said.

Monday in Missoula was a sample of what every day has been like in Seeley Lake since August 1st, with conditions often much worse. The hazardous smoke conditions there, are thought to be unprecedented in the U.S.