Do you smell smoke?
FirstBastion
Posts: 7,762
in The Commons
It's pretty bad today. There are numerous forest fires burning a few hundred miles away but the smoke is picked up on the prevailing winds and carried into our vicinity. And the smell of burnt wood is particularly pungent today. affecting the air quality too. Its gonna be a dry long summer.
Comments
it was really bad up here a few weeks back...
The smell is heavy here today too
Wow, the smoke must be already coast to coast. Stay safe guys :(
St Louis, MO, has seen the haze from the smoke, and it even smells like some BBQ smoke way off in the distance.
Very sorry to read that, hope everyone's safe. We're having the first major fires in the East as well (Brandenburg, Germany). And no rain forecast for the next decades, it seems. Take care, everyone.
It hasn't drifted here in Portland, Oregon, yet but two or three years ago, we had it really bad when wildfires up in the Columbia River Gorge were really bad.
Well, I don't smell smoke yet here in coastal North Carolina; but the air quality index has gone to poor with lots of particulate matter from the fires.
At first I didn't think we were affected here, but I've gone outside and sniffed a bit and looked off into the distance, as limited by the trees and nearby hills as it may be, and yup, there's a bit of a tang in the air and a cloudiness at distance. So, now, let's all sing "Blame Canada".
We delt with smoke from the west coast wildfires the last few years. Unsolicited suggestions: 1) a hepa air filter for your bedroom and 2) winter insolation (plastic, even trashbags) over your windows. That combo saved me when I was stuck inside for 3 mos due to wildfires. Good luck and stay safe friends.
None in Arkansas that I know of, but I expect burn bans any time now. I live in Arkansas' Boston Mountains/Plateau, the southern part of the Ozarks.
Long Island today has a very mars-like sky... nice dirty yellow-orange color if one is into inhospitable environments where blue is on the palette... Yesterday evening we were treated to a stark red sun... not orange, not red-orange... blood red and dull enough to stare at... very comforting if you grew up in a binary system near a red dwarf, super unsettling if you come from this planet.
The smoke smell has been noticeable for several days, but the yellow sky is pretty much just the end of the day yesterday and all of today... we also got some weird lighting and thunderstorms yesterday too, which I'm sure had something to do with ash particles in the air, because for a while on the south shore, it was just constant lightning with very faint thunder every few seconds... at one point it was so frequent it had an odd strobe effect.
I was driving during the red sun event, but my daughter probably caught it on her iPhone, but being an iPhone, I doubt the sun will appear very large in the photos as anything remotely far away is always microscopic on those cameras.
You know, Kanadia™... if you had just raked and vacuumed the forest floors like that little known science genius/stable forest expert advocated*, this could have all been avoided... it works for the city of Belgium... the Belgiumese vacuum and rake and even polish the forest floor to a sparkling shine... and despite them having hearts of wild dragons, they never have forest fires.
* Satirical reference. With the exception of dragons and forest floor wax, if you know not of which I refer, then it is probably better off not to explain because it's weirder than anything I generally make up... you could try Googling parts of that last thing... but... uh... yeah...
Sorry to hear about the smoke. As someone with asthma who lives in the west,smoke can really cause physical and health issues. Try to get the windows sealed, get a hepa filter, use a smoke mask when going outside. Use neti to rinse out the nose and don't let pets outdoors for long prolonged periods of time.
If you have to, relocate for the time being. Smoke particles can cause long term health issues. After the smoke subsides, get the windows fixed if you can afford to, so there is a good seal and check with a company about any vents which lead outdoors and have the filters inspected and replaced.
feel for you all and sending condolences from downunder where we also have our share of bushfires
We had a similar smoke situation in the summer of 1996 in the DFW, Texas area because of massive fire in Central America (the narrow area that joins NA & SA, not the northern Prairie States).
geoengineeringwatch dot org
Air quality is 260 around here now... 370 in NYC. Considered Hazardous.
Happy Apocalypse Everyone!
0-50 Good (happy lungs)
51-100 Moderate (acceptable air quality)
101-150 Unhealthy for sensitive groups or those with health issues
151-200 Unhealthy (for most of general public)
201-251 Very Unhealthy (for everyone)
300+ Hazardous (Health warnings for emergency conditions)
I'm in Washington and haven't noticed any smoke, but I also rarely go outside and my nose doesn't work very well.
Megh.
I just wanted to reiterate that my sarcasm and satirical nonsense is not an endorsement of alien terraforming conspiracies and lizard-people parties... forests are made of wood, wood... especially pine forest wood is kinda flammable if it dries out, lack of rain leads to dry conditions, the math on the rest is fairly easy... and the apocalypse stuff is dark humor, not an endorsement to invest in tinfoil in any significant quantities.
Toronto and Ottawa, yes, smoke is a thing now. Canada burning east and west, but so far, we have had some rain and cooler weather too, here in the middle. At least one small community in Quebec was lost due to their fires. [the buildings, not the people].
Hepa filter running full time now.
I feel a lot of sympathy. In that infamous west coast summer, I took this photo out a train window where you would normally see a parking lot, some suburb, the San Francisco bay, San Francisco, and the Golden Gate
Not quite far north enough to have Martian skies, but it was an eerily overcast day here. It was unnatural and creepy.
Maybe this can lift some spirits while we wish it would rain.
:-( It's a sad world right now. Even the animals are acting out of sorts. Mine has taken to making a strange groaning/moaning sound. Mind you, just might be poodle nonsense but in all the years she's lived, never heard her make those sounds before.
Stay safe, folks. I'm from northern CA originally and still in the Pacific Northwest, and even after seeing it for years, it never gets any less eerie.
Some of the towns in the area where I grew up just don't exist anymore because the forest fires tore through them. One of the most surreal experiences of my life was a few years back during the Carr fire, watching a straight-up hellmouth open in a city where I used to live:
If you're new to fire season, and it gets anywhere near evacuation-level bad near you, just go if you possibly can. It's like a tornado--really hard to tell where it'll go. In Redding, there were streets where the fire was still burning in some wrecked houses, while others were completely untouched.
I'm in SE lower MI and we've had hazy skies for the last week or so because of the fires in Canada. Yesterday it was reported that only New Delhi had worse air quality than we did which surprised me becuase I am HIGHLY sensitive to smoke. Yet I've had no symptoms at all ( yet). Still we're being warned to keep our windows closed today. At least the temperatures are a lot cooler. It would be MUCH worse if we had the 90 degree humid weather we had last week.
Sending prayers to all those directly affected by the fires
In late May, Denver CO had the worse air in the world for a day or two from the fires from Canada and we all had to stay inside if possible. I was doing my walking around 6am and still found it hard to breath. Still got a mile or so in and was very glad when the wind shifted it north again. But we normally get the fire smoke from southwest, west, northwest and north of us every year.
Today, we are supposed to find out what may have caused the Marshall Fire that destroyed over 1000 homes, killed two that started on 30 Dec 2021.
As a native Californian who watched the skies for smoke clouds as I would drive home from work, I know the fear of a fire caused by a careless person. In my heart I pray for everyone caught up in the aftermaths of these on-going disasters.
Just the smoke from up north.
The Fires
Data collected through After The Fire After the Fire USA Home - After the Fire USA
Another resource, if you haven't found it: https://fire.airnow.gov they post an air quality index based on a number of (including crowdsourced home) sensors.
Sick fact: The Air Quality Index Scale maxes out at "Hazardous" 500, anything above 500 is described as "Beyond Index".. guess they couldn't think of a word more severe than hazardous.
Stay safe friends.
What gets me is that they want you to stay inside. Our environment inside our home can be polluted up to two to five times more than outside our house and 100 times more polluted in some cases.