Showing off two photos taken in 2021 from an air quality monitoring station atop the M Resort, Clark County Department of Environment and Sustainability Director Marci Henson presented two very different views of Las Vegas.

In one, the buildings ahead were clear and full of color. In the other, taken four days earlier, even a trained eye couldn’t make them out through a heavy layer of gray smoke that blew in from three concurrent wildfires in Southern California.

Henson, along with U.S. Rep. Dina Titus, D-Nev., and officials from the Desert Research Institute and Western Regional Climate Center, displayed the images Monday while celebrating a $1 million grant that will help Nevadans get faster, more precise information about what to expect from nearby wildfires.

“What these two images remind us is that wildfire smoke knows no boundaries,” Henson said. “A fire burning hundreds of miles away can darken our skies and threaten our health within a number of days. This project is Nevada and DRI’s response to that challenge.”

The project will allow researchers to vastly improve current modeling by coupling on-the-ground observations that agencies already have with data from NASA satellites, experts said.

In an age of uncontrolled wildfire, better predictions are a boon to public health, especially in the Las Vegas Valley, which ranked 12th for the worst air quality of any metro area in the country last year, according to the American Lung Association.

“Wildfire itself is not going away,” said Tim Brown, director of the Western Regional Climate Center. “It’s been here for a very long time, but what we can do is mitigate the impacts of that on communities.”