Smoke and Your Health

Protect your health while it's smoky

Breathing in high levels of smoke is bad for your health.

Exposure to wildfire smoke, like all smoke, can cause health problems that include:

• burning eyes
• sore throat
• headache
• coughing
• wheezing
• shortness of breath
• worsening of heart and lung conditions

The possibility for high levels of smoke to worsen symptoms or trigger health effects for people with heart disease or lung disease is especially a concern because this can be life-threatening. Sensitive groups include:

• people with chronic heart disease or lung disease
• people with respiratory infections
• people with diabetes
• infants and children
• pregnant women
• people over 65

Taking precaution to protect your health from smoke is important for everyone, especially for sensitive groups of people. 

Take steps to reduce smoke exposure.

Stay up-to-date with the air pollution category in your area. Washington Air Quality Advisory table

Air Pollution Categories:

Good

Moderate

Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups

Unhealthy

Very Unhealthy

Hazardous

Smoke levels can change through the day with wildfires.

• When smoke levels reach the category “unhealthy for sensitive groups”, sensitive groups of people should avoid time outdoors.

• When smoke levels are in the “unhealthy”, “very unhealthy” or “hazardous” categories, everyone should limit their time outdoors, avoid outdoor exercise, and keep indoor air clean.

To keep indoor air clean, close windows and doors, but be mindful of the heat. Stay hydrated on these summer days to avoid other health problems. Use fans indoors, and if you have an air conditioner, set it to recirculate. Don’t add to indoor air pollution: avoid candle use, and don’t smoke or vacuum while it’s smoky outside. An air cleaning device with a HEPA filter can improve indoor air quality, but do not use air cleaners that produce ozone
Seek medical attention if you or those you are caring for have serious symptoms.

Diamond Creek Smoke Outlook for 8/10/2017

➤Click here for a video about the monitor installed by the Diamond Creek fire team in Mazama

➤Click here to see a version of the outlook below with functional links

Will smoke start to clear by Friday? Yes ± maybe

Ah the challenges of communicating scientific uncertainty!

Wednesday's air quality conditions remained pretty close to a repeat of Tuesday. Thursday will plagiarize from Wednesday. There is a reasonable chance that gradual improvements in western WA will commence by Friday afternoon. Eastern WA will have to wait a little longer. More on all that further down.

For today, expect mostly Good to Moderate air in southwest and northwest WA, while areas from Lynnwood down to Olympia can expect Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups or Unhealthy air at times. No change to the pessimistic forecast for most of eastern WA: Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups or worse 😢

Ground level ozone (aka smog) concerns (which we blogged about recently) persist, exacerbated by wildfire smoke. Locations in the Cascade foothills communities of east King and Pierce Counties and the Tri Cities recorded high levels of ozone this past week. An air quality advisory for smog has been issued.



However with north-northeast winds likely to let up for a while, Thursday will hopefully be the last day in a long stretch of high ozone days. At least for now.

About that reasonable chance: here are the forecast windspeeds shown by all the main weather models, for Seatac airport from now through 5PM on Sunday (times are in GMT, so subtract 7 hours for PDT; shaded times are overnight hours). The thick black line is the average of them all (known as the "ensemble mean" in geek speak).


Because many models agree that the slight uptick in speeds overnight Friday will remain through Sunday, we're more confident that smoke will start to disperse by then. Winds wont be terribly strong, so clearing will not be rapid.

The same plot for Spokane airport suggests that eastern WA will have to wait an extra 12-18 hours before clearing commences.



And, none of the major models are suggesting a return to this ridging pattern within the next week. Meaning BC wildfire smoke is unlikely to blanket the state anytime soon. Just yet. We hope.

8/9/2017 Smoke Sense App reminder

This is a repeat of news that was posted last week on the blog about an App developed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for citizens affected by smoke from wildfires to see current air quality in their location, track their personal symptoms of smoke exposure, and get recommendations on ways they can protect themselves. EPA is testing the usefulness of the free App and you can help by participating in the trial. The App is only available at this time for Android phones. To learn more and to download the App go to: www.epa.gov/air-research/smoke-sense . Or you can get it directly from the Google Play store.

Air Quality Outlook for Diamond Creek Fire 8/9/2017

It's stuck until Friday at least

The high pressure system over us is a slowpoke. By the time is vacates our airspace this weekend, it would have calmly resided over us for about 10 days. It not only brought us a heatwave but also the flow conditions that helped transport copious amounts of BC wildfire smoke here. Some cheek, overstaying its welcome!

Last evening's satellite picture (~4PM) shows much of the state socked in with smoke. Apart from the movement of some high clouds, the animation looks almost identical to this image. In other words, the ridge is preventing any substantial air movement. Air quality degraded yesterday and prompted the reinstatement of burn bans in the Puget Sound region and the issuance of an air quality advisory in Southwest WA.



So the forecast is for more of the same on Wednesday and Thursday. Western WA will see air between Moderate and Unhealthy, with coastal areas showing Good air. Eastern WA will rarely improve beyond Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups.

Morning fog has been present close to water for a few days now (see background view in the Nisqually webcam) and should not be confused with smoke.

Though the ridge S-L-O-W-L-Y moves east of the Cascades on Friday, there is no strong intrusion of marine air to rapidly clear the smoke from western WA. While air quality will start improving by Friday evening, models suggest that it might be well into the weekend before on-shore winds are able gather enough steam to flush out the smoke (image below shows surface winds on Sunday morning). Eastern WA will take even longer to clear out.

8/8/2017 Canadian fires still raging. No end in sight yet.

Fires in British Columbia are still active and showing very little sign of abating. As of today (Tuesday Aug. 8) there are 131 active fires in British Columbia. So far in 2017, 1,427,170 acres have burned in BC; their 10 year average acreage per year (2006-2016) is 382,875 acres so they are certainly experiencing a very extreme wildfire year and it's far from over. The six most significant and threatening of the BC fires are listed in the table below and the current perimeters of active fires in BC are shown on the map.

British Columbia Priority Wildfires

Name of Fire/Complex	Size (Ac.)
Elephant Hill (K20637)	284,171	About 115 miles north of US/Canada border above Ross Lake. About 85 miles W/NW of Kamloops; near Ashcroft. 30% contained.
West Quesnel Complex	197,684	About 275 miles north of the US/Canada border above Blaine, WA. 0% contained. 109 firefighters, 11 helicopters, 22 heavy equipment. Evacuation Order is in effect.
Central Cariboo Command	53,417	Fires from 0 to 40 % contained.
Hanceville Complex	64,741
Puntzi complex	25,451
Tautri Complex	258,719

A wildfire smoke dispersion model developed by the Canadians has been performing reasonably well to predict where the smoke from fires in Canada and the US will go. The modeled predictions for yesterday, today, and tomorrow at 5pm are shown below. Yesterday is shown for comparison so what you experienced in your location yesterday can be compared to the prediction for today and tomorrow. Many areas of Washington look pretty similar so no immediate change in the weather is expected to flush out the smoke. Remember this output is from a computer system that is trying to estimate fire size and growth plus meteorology so it will never be exactly correct. You can view the animations from the model at this link: https://weather.gc.ca/firework/firework_anim_e.html?type=em&utc=00

Déjà vu today and tomorrow. But not in comparison with previous years

Air quality degraded in western WA on Monday with the Puget Sound area experiencing Unhealthy air at times while the coast and southwest WA had Good to Moderate air. Tuesday and possibly Wednesday will be no different.

No Good air quality recorded anywhere in eastern WA yesterday, with most locations reading Unhealthy. And that will likely be the story for the next few days.

Déjà vu ends there. When compared to previous years, this wildfire season is unprecedented in the widespread nature of compromised air quality. Here's an animation of the worst days during the wildfires of 2012, 2015 and 2017, showing air quality conditions overlaid on a satellite map. Way more people were exposed to poor air this year than in the recent past.



However the percentage of time people breathed unhealthy air in 2017 is not as bad as past years, as shown by the barplot below. At least thus far. For instance, people in Spokane county were exposed to bad air about 5% of the time this year, while they had to deal with bad air for twice as long in 2015.

The # of acres burned, locations of fires and meteorological patterns all play roles in assessing public exposure to smoke. We will compile more data as it becomes available.

On an optimistic note, we're quite confident that the weekend will usher in a substantial shift in winds that will both cool the state and help dissipate smoke.

8/8/2017 Smoke forecast for vicinity of Diamond Creek fire for Tuesday, Aug. 8 2017

(Click here for a version of the forecast with fully functional links.)

8/7/2017 Diamond Creek fire Air Resource Advisers have arrived. Air quality forecast for the surrounding area below.

(Click here for a version of the forecast document with fully functional links)