The National Weather Service issued a code red air quality alert for Hamilton, Sequatchie and Marion counties in Tennessee, as well as Dade, Walker and Catoosa counties in Georgia, that will be in effect until midnight.
The air in Chattanooga was thick and smelled of smoke beginning Thursday.
“Georgia Forestry, they did a prescribed burn south of Ringgold, along Taylor’s Ridge,” Tyler Cantrell, air monitoring manager at the bureau, said in a phone interview.
(READ MORE: Local wildfires trigger burn restrictions, create breathing hazard)
Cantrell said that there are other burns happening in the area, especially in Georgia, but the one along Taylor’s Ridge in Chattooga County contributed the most to the smoke that blanketed Chattanooga.