Deep Orange sky in Bay Area

[macnut]

Woke up to an eerie orange sky this morning, but when I walked the dog there was no smoke, only fresh ocean air. Here’s why, for anyone camping in the San Francisco Bay Area.

https://abc7news.com/smoke-in-the-ai...-area/6414147/

[Goodspike]

Washington state and most of the Pacific Northwest was really bad with smoke 2-3 years ago (over a two summer period). It just started again, but hasn't been so bad that we've gotten the extreme effects on the sky. Before it was like sunset in the middle of the day at times.

Oh, and our air quality did get to terrible those two years and again now this year. This is the current situation for whenever you click, but 9/9/2020 is bad in many areas.

https://enviwa.ecology.wa.gov/home/map

[macnut]

That is what was so strange about the Bay Area....fresh clean air but really deep orange sky. The street lights were on until 10am, but you step outside and the air is fresh and clean. That’s a first for me! The article explains why.

[Goodspike]

My automatic headlights were on today at 10:15 a.m. It didn't really seem dark or that smoky, so maybe the sensor looks at a specific light wave that is affected by the smoke.

[macnut]

Strange days....

[Goodspike]

Originally Posted by Goodspike

https://enviwa.ecology.wa.gov/home/map

Things are getting really bad on the coast of Washington and in Portland Oregon. It's up in the hazardous range in many areas. The link above is getting overloaded from people checking air quality. Two or three years ago I was at the ocean during one of these events. It seems very odd since usually the air flow is on-shore.

Here's a news story from yesterday predicting this would happen.

https://komonews.com/news/local/mass...t-sound-region

[macnut]

Great map of WA. I wish we had something like that for CA.

[Goodspike]

Originally Posted by macnut

Great map of WA. I wish we had something like that for CA.

Try this. I just found it. Vertically integrated smoke and surface smoke seem to give some information. I haven't figured out how to get it to move forward in time for predictions.

https://hwp-viz.gsd.esrl.noaa.gov/smoke/index.html#

Zooming in may help too. Also, you pretty much need to turn up the transparency so that you can interpret the colors. Not a great site--sort of in beta right now.

[Goodspike]

Someone on another site turned me onto this site. It's fast and covers all the US.

https://www.purpleair.com/map?opt=1/.../40.91/-117.88

[Goodspike]

I'd forgotten I had this Canadian forecast site from when I went up into Canada a few years ago during their year of fires. It covers the US too. Pretty scary if you have it run into the forecast period!

https://weather.gc.ca/firework/firew...type=em&utc=00

[macnut]

Yes, that looks pretty bad. Thanks for sharing the link.

[Goodspike]

This is pretty interesting, particularly some of the gif files. It shows how the smoke has been sucked out into the Pacific and so now the on shore flows will bring smoke! On shore usually cleans our air in Washington out.

https://komonews.com/weather/scotts-...-pacific-storm

[LuvWildlife]

I believe air now.gov has available air quality by zip code.
https://www.airnow.gov/?city=Rio%20V...CA&country=USA

I live an hour from SF and this has been a long two weeks, with not much wind or air quality improvement. They expect improvement by next Thursday.

[macnut]

Thank you!

[Goodspike]

Originally Posted by Goodspike

Someone on another site turned me onto this site. It's fast and covers all the US.

https://www.purpleair.com/map?opt=1/.../40.91/-117.88

I've been using that site a few days and it is constantly low--by a significant amount. Fast doesn't matter if it's wrong.

This site works much better although somewhat slow to launch. I turn off the "low cost" sensor readings. It also shows smoke rather well.

https://fire.airnow.gov/