dark plume of smoke <\/a>enveloped the east side of Houston Monday afternoon following a recycling fire. Winds carried the smoke plume over 20 miles, and the fire was large enough to be seen on 13 Alert Radar for several hours. Smoke, whether from wildfires or industry fires, can also impact air quality. And smoke can travel and spread based on weather conditions.<\/p>\nThe TCEQ report for Tuesday, June 23 noted reduced air quality in some parts of the state due to smoke, but not from Monday’s tire fire. Wildfire smoke from burns in Mexico and a few fires in the western US led to some haziness in the sky across Texas. Any haziness observed Tuesday morning in Houston was likely due to wildfires burning in Mexico. It’s a seasonal impact, though a bit late into June.<\/p>\n
Another major impact Houstonians can see this time of year is Saharan dust. These plumes of Saharan dust travel over 3,000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean from the west coast of Africa. And depending on weather conditions, these plumes can remain intact and be quite dense as they move into the Caribbean, Gulf, and coastal U.S. Saharan dust is an irritant and can lead to a reduction in air quality, plus vibrant sunrises and sunsets when the concentration is thick enough.<\/p>\n
A lighter wave of Saharan dust is forecast to reach Southeast Texas on Wednesday. However, a large, potentially thicker concentration of Saharan dust is expected to roll into the Texas coast late Sunday into Monday. And if current projections hold true, this could lead to a larger reduction in air quality on Monday, June 29.<\/p>\n
Copyright \u00a9 2026 KTRK-TV. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) — It’s on hot, dry, and calm summer days when the air quality across Houston…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":347511,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[124026,56,58,57],"class_list":["post-347510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-124026","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=347510"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347510\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/347511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=347510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=347510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=347510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}