Is Foul Air Making Denver Sad?

AP

Remember the Rocky Mountains? Those peaks that vanished for most of the week while the Front Range gagged under soupy and smoky skies, courtesy of Canada's wildfires? 

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In case you missed it, that treasured view has returned. And just in time, Dr. Larry Wolk, chief medical officer of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, tells The New York Times.

“People who live here in Colorado are accustomed to sunny days,” he said. “And to have so many cloudy days and rainy days and now add on top of it the brown haze as a result of wildfires -- I’m concerned about physical health, but also mental health.”

AP

Mental health? Oh yes, writes the Times' Julie Turkewitz. In Colorado, "residents regard fresh air the way New Yorkers regard coffee: They need it daily, or they get grumpy."

If that's the case, brace for more bad moods, because the experts say more wildfire smoke is on the way.

"You ain't seen nothing yet," Scott Denning, a professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University, tells the Times.