Old Weather Forum

The power of a smoke screen:

We had two days of 29.1C, then a max of 21. Here are the last 12 hours from my weather station. No cloud, just smoke. We had been generating about 30 kwh of solar power each day. Today the total is 8.

We're still sitting with an AQI of 198, and a particulate matter concentration of 145 ug/m³. Right at the top of the Unhealthy category, Very Unhealthy starts at 200.



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One piece of good news. They said on the radio this morning not to vacuum. Darn. It was on my to-do list for this afternoon.

Glad to hear there's some good news.

Here's our Air Quality Index. Purple is Very Unhealthy.



And a collection of photos showing the heavy smoke in downtown Vancouver can be seen here.

AQI 12 here...

A weather system was expected to come in tonight and clear out the smoke, but now they say it has weakened and may not help much. They think the smoke will hang around until Thursday or Friday when the next rain is forecast.

Oh dear.... That is a long time off!

Our AQI is 236, Very Unhealthy, this morning. It was up to 241 last evening. We did get 4 mm of rain overnight, but it wasn't enough to clear the air.

14C here at about 10:20 this morning...

AQI 29

0.25 mm of rain here overnight, but AQI only dropped from 243 to 228. There's still plenty of smoke waiting offshore and fires continuing to burn to fill in for anything the rain might clear. Visibility has continued to be less than a mile for several days now.

Here's the aviation weather report from Victoria International Airport

SACN62 CYYJ 151600
METAR CYYJ 151600Z 27003KT 3/4SM R09/4500FT/N FU OVC080 16/15 A3010 RMK FU7AC1 SLP196=

His visibility is 3/4 miles, but on runway 09 it's 4500 feet. The sky is overcast with the cloud base at 8,000 feet, but the 7/8 of the sky is obscured by smoke. (FU, from the French for smoke, Fume) The temperature is 16, the dewpoit 15, Altimeter 30.10" and the sea level pressure is 196, which converts to 1019.6 mb.

Many years ago, when I was a forecaster on a base in Germany, for three years I had to put up with an unpleasant pilot. Some pilots were just disrespectful of weather forecasters and would hassle us relentlessly. The METAR, METeorological Aviation Report, codes have a mix of letters and numerals in their codes: 04FU,10BR etc. The version of Metar above does not use the older form with the digits.

Anyway, this pilot was complaining about 10BR, saying it was Blowing Rain and why wasn't it raining outside? (In the Canadian Aviation Report BS stood for Blowing Snow) I pointed out, and he knew, of course, that 10BR referred to Mist, BR being from the French Brouillard. I pointed out that other METAR codes came from languages other than English. For example, Hail was GR from the German Graupel.

"And, of course," I said, "we use the French abbreviation for 04 smoke."

"And was it that?" he asked.

"04FU!" I said, "From Fume." The entire squadron burst into laughter long and loud and he never bothered me again.

Hazy here in Pittsburgh.
Supposedly from the fires in California, Oregon, and Washington.

Finally some improvement!

A very faint breeze has started off and on and visibility is improving. The anemometer on my weather station has been almost entirely motionless for days. It's starting to rotate! The AQI has been slowly improving, but still far into the unhealthy range at 171. There is a hint of the sun with very faint shadows starting to appear. This is the first sign of the sun at all since last Thursday.

We are at an AQI of 159. We got up to 22C this afternoon. We moved from Very Unhealthy to Unhealthy around midnight. We had 3 mm of rain last evening, and we did get to see a hint of blue in the sky around noon. We generated 20 kwh of electricity yesterday, and we've made 16 so far today. The visibility isn't great, but it is better. The airport is reporting 3 miles visibility, so I wouldn't be able to see Washington across the Strait.

This is us this morning. Some rain is forecast for late Friday with more expected next week. That might be enough to clean the air.

AQI: 27
PM 10: 27
PM 2.5: 26
SO 2: 21

We've got beautiful, clear air today. Arriving from the NE it's cool. There's the thinnest clear of cloud and the sun is still warming. It is a beautiful day.

We're down to Green, AQI = 14, Good. Hurray!

Excellent!