ST. LOUIS — Well, good grief. After a night of tornadoes, St. Louis woke up to a blanket of wildfire smoke and dust.
It’s not our wildfire smoke and it’s not our dust. Strong winds swept through Texas and Oklahoma before hitting St. Louis Friday. The wind in Texas stirred up dust on the ground. The dust was picked up by winds aloft, just a fancy way of saying high up. The dust continued to churn in that air like a washing machine and it’s still traveling through that pocket of air, except instead of being over Texas, that air is over us.
It is a similar story for the wildfire smoke that has mixed in with the dust. Strong winds over dry brush sparked and spread wildfires through Oklahoma. Missouri was not untouched by fire either. When the winds picked up Friday afternoon, arcing from power lines caused fires in St. Louis area neighborhoods. There were also reports of wildfires closer to the Arkansas border…