Transcriber Weather

[Michael]

We were 29.1 yesterday, and we got up to 29.1 again today. We have a bit of smoke, but nothing like what Gordon has. These fires are truly awful. I hate to think of what the next ten years will bring.

[Randi]

Good luck, Gordon

[ggordon]

I'm about as well prepared as possible after having gone through this two years ago, although we didn't have the nearby fires then. I have additional air filters in almost every room and an N-100 mask that I can wear if the smoke gets too bad.

[Michael]

We can smell smoke here this morning, and the sky has a definite orange hue. It isn't as bad as it is over the states to the south of us, of course. We'll see how we fare through the day. We did get to 29.1 C yesterday and on Wednesday. I don't think we'll get quite that warm today.

[Michael]

This is us. We're only 19C at noon today; we were 26C at this time yesterday. We've generated 9 kwh so far today, and we had 15 at this time yesterday. It's the smoke...

[ggordon]

We seem to be in a pocket of relatively cleaner air down here for the moment. The AQI is currently 172, but has been slowly increasing all morning. Visibility is down to about a mile and the smoke smell is very strong. The forecast calls for it to be much worse by tonight. AQI between 150 and 200 is the red zone which is considered unhealthy for everyone. An AQI of 200 triggers a health alert. Downtown Seattle has just hit 202.

Inside the house is okay so far. I have three professional grade air filters around the house that I normally run on low year-round for allergies, but have them on high now. I have high-end furnace filters designed to trap smoke particles attached to four box fans also cleaning the air. And I replaced my normal furnace filter with one of the high-end filters and have the furnace running with the fan only.

These furnace filters were already turning brown from the trapped smoke particles yesterday. So they're definitely working. Also I notice a major difference between inside and outside the house.

[Randi]

Good to hear that your preparations are working!

[Michael]

Our Air Quality Index is 192. It was as high as 198 about three hours ago. Our temperature is down to 21C. A trong smell of smoke. I'm pondering the idea of suing the State of Washington for my loss of solar power. At $0.09 / kwh it could amount to $0.50.

[Randi]

A helpful newspaper article says:
"Experts say .... They also recommend avoiding strenuous outdoor activities such as exercising or mowing the lawn when the air is bad."

People need to be told that?

[Michael]

Sadly my strenuous exercise was in the gym at the Y. They did have the doors open, though. We had a choice, heat or smoke. We opted for smoke.

[ggordon]

The AQI here jumped from 172 to 226 over the last two hours. So we're well into the "Very Unhealthy" range now. Yesterday they were predicting a major increase to hit this evening.

[ggordon]

Well this is interesting. The Federal government web site says that the AQI at the monitoring site about a mile from here hit a max of 226 at 4 PM. However, the Washington State web site says the AQI at the same monitoring station peaked at 314 at 1 PM. I would tend to believe the state reports over the federal these days. It's clearly unhealthy out there regardless.

[ggordon]

Okay, I think I see what's different. The federal index is measuring the combined level of pollution from all sources, with all but PM2.5 being quite low right now, whereas the state site is reporting just the PM2.5 concentration. Smoke from wildfires shows up primarily as PM2.5. So the value reported by the federal site is diluted by the other pollution sources and the situation is really far worse, with which my nose and eyes are in full agreement.

So, looking strictly at the PM2.5 level, we have clearly moved into the "Hazardous" level, as have nearly all stations in the Seattle area.

[ggordon]

View looking down from my house toward downtown Kent this afternoon. The farthest trees in the distance are about four blocks from my house. Downtown Kent is a few blocks beyond. That's my neighbor's house in the foreground.

[Michael]

Although we had numbers in the 190+ range, your smoke looks much worse than ours. We had just a slight colour, but a strong odor in the air, but the visibility didn't seem to be reduced all that much. Mind you, I wasn't in a spot where I could look across the Strait. I looked at the concentration on the AirNow.gov site for us. We were up to 162 ug/m³ at 7:00 PM last night, and our AQI was 206, very unhealthy. Right now it's 137 ug/m₃ and the AQI is 195, unhealthy.

[Randi]

Pittsburgh's AQI is currently 16.

[ggordon]

The air quality is very slightly improved this morning, but visibility is about half what it was yesterday. Humidity was 80% when I woke up. So there may be a mix of fog with the smoke.

[Randi]

Sounds miserable, but hopefully the humidity will help against the fires a little

[jil]

Sounds (and looks) awful. Hope you get some rain soon.

[ggordon]

The forecast was for warmer today with a high around 27, but the sun has been completely blocked and as of Noon the temperature has only reached 15 after a low of 13 overnight. Possible rain is forecast to begin Monday or Tuesday, which should clear this out.