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Steamboat Springs — A massive wildfire in eastern Arizona is to blame for the hazy conditions over Steamboat Springs and Oak Creek. The smoke could linger despite a cold front and a shifting wind pattern that were expected to move into the Yampa Valley tonight.

The Wallow fire had grown to nearly 365 square miles — more than 233,000 acres — by Monday afternoon and was pushing smoke as far as Iowa. In Colorado, the result was air quality warnings for cities along the Front Range and the Eastern Plains. According to the state’s health department, people with heart disease and respiratory illness as well as the elderly and young children should limit prolonged periods of exertion outdoors.

Mike Zopf, director of Routt County’s Department of Environmental Health, said his department is monitoring the local air quality. Real-time data wasn’t available Monday afternoon, but Zopf didn’t think the air quality had deteriorated anywhere near the threshold that would necessitate restrictions for residents.

Nonetheless, he encouraged folks to be sensitive to what their bodies are telling them.

Zopf said the particulates from carbon sources such as wildfires and wood-burning fireplaces are extremely small — the perfect size for visibility and respiratory impacts.

Lynn Barclay, a fire mitigation specialist for the Bureau of Land Management in Northwest Colorado, said the smoky haze could clear out of much of the region by late Monday and early Tuesday, largely the result of an incoming cold front that would shift the wind direction. However, she said the geography of Steamboat Springs and Oak Creek could trap the smoke in the valley.

The fire danger in Northwest Colorado is moderate, Barclay said. She noted that recent wind activity and a lack of precipitation has dried out vegetation and is leading to increased fire danger as summer approaches.

“We’re headed that direction,” Barclay said Monday afternoon.