Friday, August 31, 2018
Local smoke outlook — Aug. 31: North Columbia Basin area
*This outlook was produced through the support of the Okanogan/Wenatchee National Forest and the Incident Management Teams working on local fires to help inform nearby communities of smoke impacts.
2 comments:
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Canada's air monitoring system is up to snuff. I looked at the sky tonight in Chelan, and had to go looking where is this smoke coming from. It's not in local news. Most of it is from Canada. Some is prob. from the arsons southeast of us in WA. The green spots all over this area on the North Columbia Basin map, are inaccurate/wrong every year. Green is for clean air. This is polluted/unsafe air. We could use some action, and fast.
ReplyDeleteSeveral inaccuracies here: first, smoke can remain aloft and not mix down to the surface. Even though visible in the sky, it wont be recorded by ground- based monitors or affect people's breathing. Second, the air quality monitoring network is generally well calibrated and quality checked at EPA- mandated intervals. If data quality objectives are not met, the instrument is adjusted accordingly before being returned to service, and data may be invalidated if needed.
DeleteThird, smoke cannot reach the Chelan area from Canada and the southeast (Highway 243) fire simultaneously as this would require opposing transport winds. No such scenario occurred within the last few days. There is no evidence on the satellites, models or monitors that Hwy 243 smoke moved over Chelan, but Alberta smoke did move over eastern & central WA late last week. We blogged about that.
Lastly, it is entirely possible that smaller, localized burns produced enough ground- level smoke plumes that didnt reach any of the monitors. This blog provides several resources to safeguard your health during smoke events, whatever their origin. See https://wasmoke.blogspot.com/p/federal.html.