Wildfire Smoke Drifts Across 1,000 Miles of the West

A thick pall of smoke originating from wildfires in Washington and Idaho and covering a broad swath of the Western United States is seen in this image acquired by NASA's Terra satellite on Thursday, Aug. 20, 2015. (Source: NASA Worldview) Strong winds blew through Washington State yesterday (Aug. 19), whipping up wildfires and causing them to run into new territory. Tragically, it appears that those winds caused flames to overtake a U.S. Forest Service vehicle carrying personnel who were battling a blaze in the foothills of the Cascades in north-central Washington. The resulting accident killed three of the firefighters. "It was a hell storm up here,"Okanogan County Sheriff Frank Rogers told Spokane news station KXLY-TV. "The fire was racing and the winds were blowing in every direction and then it would shift. ... It was tough on 'em up here."