I'm in southeastern Canada years ago smoke from Quebec forest fires made the sky red. The soil where I am from is also red. It was like living on Mars. The fun ends quickly when your throat gets scratchy and there is no where you can go to escape it the air in your house has to come from outside too.
I'm not looking forward to any smoke now my dad has COPD, IPF, is on oxygen, and he's elderly. If we get any amount of smoke here it will be the end of him. It's hard enough trying to keep him from contracting SARS-Cov-2 and developing covid-19.
>I'm not looking forward to any smoke now my dad has COPD, IPF, is on oxygen, and he's elderly. If we get any amount of smoke here it will be the end of him. It's hard enough trying to keep him from contracting SARS-Cov-2 and developing covid-19
Seriously, get a HEPA rated air filter. Speaking as someone who has some serious lung issues, it's literally life changing/saving. Honeywell sells a number of models, cost is between 150-270 USD, depending on the size/amount of air you want moved.
The University of Michigan made an instructional video showing how you can easily make an air purifier out of a box fan and a HEPA-rated furnace filter for $25: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kH5APw_SLUU
It won't be as good as a purpose-built machine, but it will be far better than nothing at all.
TheWirecutter found it reduced particulate matter in a room by 87%, if you do it right. They also make clear important caveats about this method -- in short, this works in a pinch, but probably should not be used in place of a purpose-built filter if you want one for year-round use. https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-air-purifier...
If you have COPD or other serious lung issues, don't get just one HEPA filter. These machines are rated to filter the air in an area that's certain number of square feet, based on how many CFM of air they move. Get at least enough of them that your whole living space is covered, and deploy them throughout the entire dwelling. You may want more individual machines so you can run them on a lower fan setting, which produces less noise. Assuming availability of outlets, you can also go for a larger number of smaller machines, each with a lower CFM rating, which should also reduce the noise level somewhat.
I personally use Winix machines. I don't think it matters much in terms of efficacy which brand you use, so, consider the cost of replacement filters here. The machines I bought were around $200 each, and worth every penny, IMHO.
My machines are both made for environments with pets, so they have a pre-filter to catch large things like dog fur, and they also have an activated carbon filter to pull odors out of the air. The carbon filter is quite effective. Unfortunately, I was able to test this first-hand, by observing that I could no longer smell dog poop after about 10 minutes of the machine running in the room said poop was in.
I wouldn't worry about silly features like accompanying smartphone apps, or any kind of "ion technology." IMO, that stuff is mostly marketing fluff, and just adds complexity to what should basically be a small fan with a filtered intake.
I've found my machines to be very effective in cleaning the air inside my apartment. I've been lucky enough so far to not have any issues from the Bay Area smoke, despite having asthma and allergies. I credit that to my HEPA filter machines, as well as wearing an N95 mask outside whenever the AQI is too high.
As an aside, I once put one of my machines (each rated for around 300 sq. ft., IIRC) inside my bathroom, which is no more than about 30 sq. ft., for a while. Eventually, the air in there smelled so clean, it literally took me back to the days when I used to regularly work in a class 1,000 (ISO 3) electronics clean room. "Class 1,000" means the air inside is supposed to contain no more than 10^3 particle >= 0.1 µm in diameter per m^3 of air. Once you've smelled the air inside a decently high level clean room, you'll recognize it when you come across it again. It smells like a glorious whole lot of nothing, which makes my allergies happy. :-). For reference, ordinary, unfiltered, not-apparently-dusty air typically has about 10^6 particles >=0.1 µm per m^3.
This. My sleep has greatly improved since putting a HEPA filter in my bedroom and I rather enjoy the white noise of the fan. Good units like the Sharp Plasmacluster I use have a large, slow moving blower (not a higher speed fan with fewer, larger blades) so the noise is very subtle.
If you have central heat you can sometimes configure the thermostat to run the blower separately from the heating element. This creates a nice positive pressure environment. If you have a MERV 10 or better filter installed on the furnace then it's actually pulling in filtered air, as any high enough MERV filter will filter PM2.5 with a decent efficiency. I think they start filtering PM2.5 at about MERV 10, and by MERV 13 they're filtering 90% or more of PM2.5.
Or in a pinch, a HEPA vacuum cleaner. Double points if you rig it to take in outside air and vent it inside to create a positive pressure of filtered air.
> The fun ends quickly when your throat gets scratchy and there is no where you can go to escape it the air in your house has to come from outside too.
What boggles my mind is why, given the amount of usual air pollution and spikes like that, people care more if their kale is exactly organic.
Yup. It's been a fun weekend. Everyone in the family is feeling the cabin fever, but outside (Bellevue, WA) smells like inside of a fireplace. We put a few boxed fans with HEPA filters around the house and they are now black. In hindsight, should've bought more filters, but all the stores and Amazon are sold out for the near future.
Speaking about the future, this puts planning in perspective. With the climate changing, remote work, covid and all, the way we live in the next 20 years might look somewhat different than past 50. The new "American Dream" might be a tiny condo with great AC, minimal footprint, solar energy and rain water storage...etc.
It's a good time to ponder what the real estate and living of the future could look like!
Portland burbs here. It's been a crazy week for us. When those howling east winds started a week ago Monday (9/7) we got some smoke initially that evening as fires started flaming up immediately with that dry wind. Then we awoke on Tuesday to the pleasant surprise of blue skies as I guess the winds shifted just a bit so that the smoke missed us here, but down valley we were seeing some very apocalyptic pics. And we could look to the south and see the smoke plume. The good air stayed around till Thursday afternoon. We've had AQI up into the 400s on occasion since. Yesterday it went down a bit into the mid 300s. Today it's down to about 250 and we're just elated that it's gone from hazardous to very unhealthy. The house has been closed up since last Thursday, we're fortunate to have a HEPA filter that move to whatever room we're in at the time - but it's definitely still noticeable - scratchy throat, tight chest, headache, eyes stinging by evening. We've gone through one of the HEPA filter cartridges already.
I hadn't been out of the house from last Thursday until this afternoon when I ventured out with an N95 mask to water the garden and make a quick trip to the store - my eyes are still smarting a couple hours later. On the weekend we were told things would get better with some showers on Monday, but they never materialized. Now they're telling us it'll be Thursday or Friday before we get some significant (but not complete) clearing. I hope they're right this time - a lot of people are starting to lose hope.
Be sure to have a bypass on your rain system to flush the smoke precipitates off your roof before they get into the tank. My parents water used to taste of tar over winter when they were lighting their fire.
Good to note! One thing I definitely want to do when I have the means is built a cabin/house with the latest and greatest efficiencies. Not in a hippy-earth-loving way, but more in a curious engineer way.
Did you know there are these things called Earthships in New Mexico? It's a bit too hippy for me, but on the right track.
Smart idea. Whatever filters I picked up come with a little bluetooth chip on them and require an account with the manufacturer to get air quality information. I didn't bother for privacy reasons, but judging by 40k reviews on Apple Store, there are plenty of people who are subscribed to their air filter delivery. It makes a lot of sense.
I realize that air filters are the perfect candidate for a subscription service... but it's just insane the that every product in existence has a business prepared to ship some of it to you monthly.
I happened to be at Home Depot the day after the skies turned gray with ash. I noticed a ton of people down one aisle and wondered what was going on. It turned out to be the Air Filter aisle. Oh right. I was able to grab the very last air filter for my furnace size. Everything else was cleaned out.
That's actually a fantastic reminder - get commercial things when it comes to high quality products - they definitely don't come to mind at first, but it's the same for many things, from appliances to boats. Commercial grade is meant to last way more than over the counter consumer goods!
He posted updates yesterday and today explaining why the models were wrong, it’s a very interesting insight into some of the complexities of the problem and how many variables are involved:
>> So I am not optimistic for improvement either today or Wednesday. With smoke production (at a lower level) by the continuing fires, a "stuck" weather pattern, and smoke trapped in a relatively stable lower atmosphere, things just can't improve rapidly.
We’re in the Willamette valley and originally the smoke was supposed to let up last Thursday. That quickly passed and then it was Saturday night. Instead, we got dense, stagnant fog and continued off-the-charts air quality index numbers. But all the while, talk of how the rain was coming today. Well, not looking like rain today.
This has been a slog. Yet only a few towns over, there has been utter devastation from the fires. So we’re incredibly fortunate.
The headaches and scratchy throat have been pretty non-stop but mainly it’s the kids that have me concerned — the indoor air quality isn’t great, but have doing my best to keep the air from getting too bad. (Furnace filter / air purifier / taping the windows / etc).
Yeah, the weather forecasts for air quality have been quite inaccurate. Since Friday, the projections for Oakland CA have constantly been, “it’ll clear up in the next 24 hours.” Only now, Tuesday morning, has the AQI dropped below 100.
It seems like it’s just a harder problem than regular weather forecasting. Nobody has much experience with giant smoke clouds like this one. So I can forgive the weather service some inaccuracy. Just don’t rely on the AQI forecasts for much.
Yep. Predictions are obviously hard, but there's no wind to blow the smoke away, so I don't know why it is routinely predicted to do so 48 hours in the future. There is enough smoke piled up over the ocean (at least to judge from the satellite pictures) that it would take several days of steady winds to clear everything out. Any wind strong enough to theoretically clear the smoke quickly would probably spark new fires instead. And yet even with multiple fires nowhere near containment, the Spare The Air forecast still says "moderate" air in two days. I'll believe it when I breathe it.
The "incident meteorologist" for the North Complex fire was quoted yesterday as saying there was no system predicted that would cause a notable improvement in air quality for the next two weeks. Again, assuming no new fires, which is a stretch given that we're right in the middle of the traditional fire season.
The only forecast I rely on is the National Weather Service. Their site is painfully dated but the accuracy is unmatched.
I'm seeing some improvement in Redmond as of 3pm. I can see more distant hilltops than yesterday, sky feels slightly more blue, and looking directly at the sun hurts the eyes more than yesterday. Still extremely smoky don't get me wrong. Looking at the NWS forecasts they mention smoke going forward until Thursday night when we may get a thunderstorm.
How appropriate, a blog post about weather forecasts being inaccurate is itself inaccurate. Same down here in the Willamette Valley, I'd like to be able to breathe again.
I was in Delhi in January/February a couple years ago and the air quality index looked the same as the image from the article around Salem, OR every day I was there. Some nights I’d check the stats and it’d be around 600. The depressing thing is you end up getting sort of used to it, albeit with a bad cough.
The effects of our reckless destruction of the environment are sadly in your face every day in many parts of the world.
I have a utility that automatically sets my desktop picture to a snapshot from the GOES satellite image feed every 20 minutes or so, and this morning I noticed it showing this [0]. I was curious to see if it was what I thought, so I switched to the west-coast feed [1], and indeed, the smoke appears to have crossed the entire continent on the jet stream.
No apparent effects here on the east coast for now, but I'm betting sunsets will be prettier than normal for a while...definitely somewhat concerned for the possibility that it could worsen, though, if the fires continue.
(Images come from here [2], swap the 16 in the URL for 17 for the west coast feed)
I’m in the midsts of this right now and it’s depressing. I spent yesterday morning with a sore throat and itchy eyes and most of the afternoon hopelessly driving hours away for a box fan and furnace filter (I finally found them). All the while I should have been working. Some of my coworkers have complained of week-long headaches. If anyone else is suffering from this: you are not alone.
Willamette Valley here, and I feel you. Was really investing a lot of my optimism in the rain that was talked about for today, for over a week now — which doesn’t look like it’s gonna happen. This has been a long, long week.
Here in Bend it's pretty awful too. We live here because we love the outdoors, and we've been locked up inside since Friday. The kids are going stir crazy. Everyone was getting excited when the AQI dipped a bit under 200 yesterday (still rated "unhealthy") because we had been over 500. Now it's back up though, and they're talking about maybe things getting better by Thursday.
When I stepped out of my house last night and saw clouds and a little bit of blue I was ridiculously happy. None of the predicted wind or rain has shown up so far, I wonder if the fires are blocking the normal wind from the ocean.
Also Willammette Valley. I was excited to look up this morning, and be able to both tell where the sun was, and see the outline of clouds through the smoke. Its been a week now.
Vashon Island. I heard some rain last night and was excited to see if the smoke had lifted when I woke up. But was very disappointed to see that it hasn’t. I’ve been indoors since Friday.
There's no good timing for these fires but now just seems really bad. Can't socialize inside because of Covid, can't socialize outdoors because of smoke. Tough time to be in the West Coast.
(Please don't take this as making light of the situation in the PNW. I realize it's awful and don't wish it on anyone.)
I can think of one, small silver lining to these fires:
I recently read that Asian giant hornets had recently been found in the PNW, and if they weren't wiped out in a few years they'd become permanently entrenched. I find that prospect absolutely terrifying, so perhaps we'll get lucky and these fires will wipe them out.
wow, the temtop website sent my laptop fans spinning with all the crap it tries to load, and that my content blockers went into overdrive blocking (especially, and inexplicably, from reviewsimportify.com).
still, i'm interested in getting a good pm2.5 monitor to pair with my air purifier, as air pollution is a much bigger issue than covid (air pollution certainly affects vast swaths of people across the world, persistently and largely invisibly, and is only getting worse over the decades).
is waiting for the wifi version (currently sold out) worth nearly twice the (sale) price of an m10?
Coal smoke in that case, not wood smoke. Coal is a terrible pollutant. If you survive the wood smoke, the literature suggests you'll be back to normal in a couple weeks.
I’ve been using an app that converts AQI to equivalent cigarettes smoked per day. It’s not perfect but it’s something I can wrap my head around as a meaningfully bad number.
These apps really put this into perspective for someone who used to smoke a pack a day 15 years ago :)
So I guess spending all day outdoors is not THAT bad?
I'd really rather not download a whole app for this so my apologies if this answer is readily available in the app, but...
I keep seeing these kinds of conversions (AQI to equivalent cigarettes per day) but I never see numbers on how long you need to be outside for that to be the case. Is it based on assuming someone on the coast (where AC is rare) having to keep their windows open all day? Is it based on 1-2 trips outside per day? How does it incorporate exposure time into the conversion rate?
Yeesh. I'm sorry. I'm in CO and even the levels here get me all of the symptoms you mentioned. Last week I drove 1700 miles and only escaped the smoke during a summertime snowfall. It rebounded and while driving I was suppressing a mild anxiety attack bc there's nothing you can do to escape it.
Driving at sunrise/sunset reminds me of the original Mad Max. Expect real and depressing.
I wonder how much of an effect this will have on crop yields and crop quality? I expect we'll see lower yields and less carbohydrate content. Also, what is the composition of the particles emitted by the fires? Is it mostly carbon or is there some potassium hydroxide? Is that fertilizing to any degree?
Diffuse light has a tendency to increase yield by decreasing the shading effect on lower leaves, so it largely cancels out. It is also fairly easily to saturate photosites in full sun. Heat/water are more limiting in these contexts.
Carbohydrate content of crops has generally been going up with all that CO2 in the air, so maybe a bit less photosynthesis will do well for the nutritional content?
That isn’t the statistic I would expect to be pulled out here. Not all land area has any chance of catching/spreading a fire. Fires don’t really spread through rainforest; they definitely don’t spread through rocky areas; nor, really, through swampland; nor across mountain ranges; nor through irrigated cropland. (Nor through modern concrete cities, but city land-area is negligible.)
There’s definitely some portion of the US land mass that’s covered in either dry brush, dry underbrush, or dry grass. But that portion is pretty small, I would think. It could actually be that a fairly large portion of “potentially burnable” land-area catches fire each year. (That doesn’t imply anything about there being any less of it for next year, though; it recovers!)
Also, when these fires burn mature forests, they don't actually burn the huge trees, just the smaller brush. However, they are so hot that they kill the huge, mature trees. So a couple of years later, you have a huge amount of dead trees ready to burn again.
I'm not sure the US as a whole is the right comparison, since not all areas are equally prone to wildfires. Each of the West Coast states is above 1% of their land area burned, with California and Oregon pushing 3%.
one percent or more burns each year, the extent is being exaggerated for political purposes but you can view the numbers[0] for yourself. How many millions of acres burn each year is heavily under estimated by the general public because we only see hysteria when it does get reported. This in no way discounts the loss of life and property. Just saying, if a politician is talking then listen to someone else
Now do take care going into how history [1] plays into the numbers as shown on Cato's page because the larger numbers in the 30s and 40s were over disagreements in proscribed burns. Yet the years before that pissing match weren't exactly fun.
That depends on many factors. If the fires burned a significant portion of the places where fires are likely to start, say, forested hilltops which attract lightning or areas near where humans start fires, then it could slow things down for a few years.
It also depends on the fuel source. Grasses and certain vegetation can build up fuel loads in a year or two. Trees are obviously slower.
The fires really didn't burn much total land though, so it's very likely we can see big fires next year. We regularly get fires all over the west, this is just a bad year.
It's very unlikely to be a one-time event, the effects are going to be seen for a long time. Even a big forest fire is not so big that it significantly changes the forest stock remaining.
Feedback loop thinking helps. This is a situation that creates conditions for more forest fires.
Linear thinking, as an example, would be something like world heats up -> forest is on fire -> post-forest-fire world. Instead we are living in a world where every factor influences every other.
In Oregon it is highly unlikely to recur at this scale and speed. This year was a very mild year for fires in Oregon. But, a freak wind event turned fires only a few acres large that had been burning for weeks into 100,000+ acre fires overnight.
As the decades roll on I imagine that as things get hotter and dryer one shouldn't bet on anything.
This is not scientific at all, just an observation that lets me hope for a clean 2021. I live outside Seattle, and the 2018 fire season was terrible (I have asthmatics in my family). We had some fire every year since I moved here in 2014. In 2019, we didn't have any smoke days all Summer/Fall. I like to tell myself next year will be better, but the other posters in this thread using, you know, numbers, are probably more right.
It really depends on observations that you could get once we are in after spring 2021. Like how much of the fire spreads and if there is a drought next year.
Weather occurs in cycles but with climate change we may have a new type of cycle which makes it really hard to understand or even model in general.
True, but OTOH CA will likely start to change it's forestry management practices as a result of this. The distribution of surface fuel is a joint effect of drought and policy/management.
Readit News
I'm not looking forward to any smoke now my dad has COPD, IPF, is on oxygen, and he's elderly. If we get any amount of smoke here it will be the end of him. It's hard enough trying to keep him from contracting SARS-Cov-2 and developing covid-19.
Seriously, get a HEPA rated air filter. Speaking as someone who has some serious lung issues, it's literally life changing/saving. Honeywell sells a number of models, cost is between 150-270 USD, depending on the size/amount of air you want moved.
It won't be as good as a purpose-built machine, but it will be far better than nothing at all.
TheWirecutter found it reduced particulate matter in a room by 87%, if you do it right. They also make clear important caveats about this method -- in short, this works in a pinch, but probably should not be used in place of a purpose-built filter if you want one for year-round use. https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-air-purifier...
I personally use Winix machines. I don't think it matters much in terms of efficacy which brand you use, so, consider the cost of replacement filters here. The machines I bought were around $200 each, and worth every penny, IMHO.
My machines are both made for environments with pets, so they have a pre-filter to catch large things like dog fur, and they also have an activated carbon filter to pull odors out of the air. The carbon filter is quite effective. Unfortunately, I was able to test this first-hand, by observing that I could no longer smell dog poop after about 10 minutes of the machine running in the room said poop was in.
I wouldn't worry about silly features like accompanying smartphone apps, or any kind of "ion technology." IMO, that stuff is mostly marketing fluff, and just adds complexity to what should basically be a small fan with a filtered intake.
I've found my machines to be very effective in cleaning the air inside my apartment. I've been lucky enough so far to not have any issues from the Bay Area smoke, despite having asthma and allergies. I credit that to my HEPA filter machines, as well as wearing an N95 mask outside whenever the AQI is too high.
As an aside, I once put one of my machines (each rated for around 300 sq. ft., IIRC) inside my bathroom, which is no more than about 30 sq. ft., for a while. Eventually, the air in there smelled so clean, it literally took me back to the days when I used to regularly work in a class 1,000 (ISO 3) electronics clean room. "Class 1,000" means the air inside is supposed to contain no more than 10^3 particle >= 0.1 µm in diameter per m^3 of air. Once you've smelled the air inside a decently high level clean room, you'll recognize it when you come across it again. It smells like a glorious whole lot of nothing, which makes my allergies happy. :-). For reference, ordinary, unfiltered, not-apparently-dusty air typically has about 10^6 particles >=0.1 µm per m^3.
This should work.
What boggles my mind is why, given the amount of usual air pollution and spikes like that, people care more if their kale is exactly organic.
Speaking about the future, this puts planning in perspective. With the climate changing, remote work, covid and all, the way we live in the next 20 years might look somewhat different than past 50. The new "American Dream" might be a tiny condo with great AC, minimal footprint, solar energy and rain water storage...etc.
It's a good time to ponder what the real estate and living of the future could look like!
I hadn't been out of the house from last Thursday until this afternoon when I ventured out with an N95 mask to water the garden and make a quick trip to the store - my eyes are still smarting a couple hours later. On the weekend we were told things would get better with some showers on Monday, but they never materialized. Now they're telling us it'll be Thursday or Friday before we get some significant (but not complete) clearing. I hope they're right this time - a lot of people are starting to lose hope.
Did you know there are these things called Earthships in New Mexico? It's a bit too hippy for me, but on the right track.
Move to Europe :) We don’t have crazy fires, high risk of earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes. That’s becoming a compelling argument!
>> MUCH cleaner air will push in by 4 PM Sunday over the coastal zone and will just reach Seattle late in the afternoon
>> By 1 AM Monday, air quality will be hugely better in western Washington
As of now (Tuesday) there is no sign of clearing. Here in Seattle we are still in the "very unhealthy" range for AQI.
https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2020/09/much-more-pessimistic...https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2020/09/why-smoke-situation-i...
Basically, no good news till at least tomorrow:
>> So I am not optimistic for improvement either today or Wednesday. With smoke production (at a lower level) by the continuing fires, a "stuck" weather pattern, and smoke trapped in a relatively stable lower atmosphere, things just can't improve rapidly.
This has been a slog. Yet only a few towns over, there has been utter devastation from the fires. So we’re incredibly fortunate.
The headaches and scratchy throat have been pretty non-stop but mainly it’s the kids that have me concerned — the indoor air quality isn’t great, but have doing my best to keep the air from getting too bad. (Furnace filter / air purifier / taping the windows / etc).
It seems like it’s just a harder problem than regular weather forecasting. Nobody has much experience with giant smoke clouds like this one. So I can forgive the weather service some inaccuracy. Just don’t rely on the AQI forecasts for much.
The "incident meteorologist" for the North Complex fire was quoted yesterday as saying there was no system predicted that would cause a notable improvement in air quality for the next two weeks. Again, assuming no new fires, which is a stretch given that we're right in the middle of the traditional fire season.
The only forecast I rely on is the National Weather Service. Their site is painfully dated but the accuracy is unmatched.
https://rapidrefresh.noaa.gov/hrrr/HRRRsmoke/
The effects of our reckless destruction of the environment are sadly in your face every day in many parts of the world.
No apparent effects here on the east coast for now, but I'm betting sunsets will be prettier than normal for a while...definitely somewhat concerned for the possibility that it could worsen, though, if the fires continue.
(Images come from here [2], swap the 16 in the URL for 17 for the west coast feed)
[0] https://cdn.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES16/ABI/FD/GEOCOLOR/2020...
[1] https://cdn.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES17/ABI/FD/GEOCOLOR/2020...
[2] https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES/fulldisk.php?sat=G16
Still horrible outside, but definitely improved.
I can think of one, small silver lining to these fires:
I recently read that Asian giant hornets had recently been found in the PNW, and if they weren't wiped out in a few years they'd become permanently entrenched. I find that prospect absolutely terrifying, so perhaps we'll get lucky and these fires will wipe them out.
I have 4 (5th is on its way).
They work extremely well and if you pair them with a Temptop AQI sensor you can see how well in real time: https://www.temtopus.com/collections/temtopus-pm2-5-pm10-mon...
Those temptop sensors are great. I've previously had awair, foobot, and purple sensors which all sucked in different ways.
Really long thread about this here: https://www.reddit.com/r/AirQuality/comments/ikf1ed/are_ther...
Everyone keeps saying this when they have been all sold out for the past 10 days.
Went to that link. Tried to order. Glad i read the small text carefully:
"Ships within 28 Business Days"
Yeah...
still, i'm interested in getting a good pm2.5 monitor to pair with my air purifier, as air pollution is a much bigger issue than covid (air pollution certainly affects vast swaths of people across the world, persistently and largely invisibly, and is only getting worse over the decades).
is waiting for the wifi version (currently sold out) worth nearly twice the (sale) price of an m10?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog_of_London
[0]https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/household-a...
I can see how it may be too late for that...
Inhaling smoke is bad for your health, absolutely, but I fail to see many similarities between the two situations.
It's currently giving me 2.3 cigarettes per day, and I live a decent distance away from any of the fires (Sacramento, CA).
I keep seeing these kinds of conversions (AQI to equivalent cigarettes per day) but I never see numbers on how long you need to be outside for that to be the case. Is it based on assuming someone on the coast (where AC is rare) having to keep their windows open all day? Is it based on 1-2 trips outside per day? How does it incorporate exposure time into the conversion rate?
We screwed up over-preventing fires during the last 100 years and built up a huge tinder box.
Driving at sunrise/sunset reminds me of the original Mad Max. Expect real and depressing.
Dead Comment
It's really not an issue.
Edit: My original question was more in mind with does this have same effect as controlled burning / prescribed burning. Thank you all for replies :)
So, given the same weather conditions, you should expect more fires next year.
There’s definitely some portion of the US land mass that’s covered in either dry brush, dry underbrush, or dry grass. But that portion is pretty small, I would think. It could actually be that a fairly large portion of “potentially burnable” land-area catches fire each year. (That doesn’t imply anything about there being any less of it for next year, though; it recovers!)
Deleted Comment
Now do take care going into how history [1] plays into the numbers as shown on Cato's page because the larger numbers in the 30s and 40s were over disagreements in proscribed burns. Yet the years before that pissing match weren't exactly fun.
[0]https://www.nifc.gov/fireInfo/fireInfo_stats_totalFires.html
[1]https://www.cato.org/blog/smokey-view-northwest
It also depends on the fuel source. Grasses and certain vegetation can build up fuel loads in a year or two. Trees are obviously slower.
The fires really didn't burn much total land though, so it's very likely we can see big fires next year. We regularly get fires all over the west, this is just a bad year.
Feedback loop thinking helps. This is a situation that creates conditions for more forest fires.
Linear thinking, as an example, would be something like world heats up -> forest is on fire -> post-forest-fire world. Instead we are living in a world where every factor influences every other.
As the decades roll on I imagine that as things get hotter and dryer one shouldn't bet on anything.
This article notes:
- In 2019, $160M was spent putting out wildfires in CA, but the economic damage was $80B
- 3M acres have burned in CA this year
- In order to manage wildfires appropriately in CA, 20M acres would need to be addressed (thinning or burning) every year.
- There are 48M acres of mountains, brush, and grassland in CA
Here's the Cal Fire map for California: https://www.fire.ca.gov/incidents/
These fires are certainly large, but there's plenty more that can burn.
It really depends on observations that you could get once we are in after spring 2021. Like how much of the fire spreads and if there is a drought next year.
Weather occurs in cycles but with climate change we may have a new type of cycle which makes it really hard to understand or even model in general.