Is it even possible to have air this bad?

Sac Arrow

Sac Arrow

Touchdown! Greaser!
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Snorting his way across the USA
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Okay, for starters I have not been aware of the whole AQI thing because it has never been an issue for me, until now. Yes, California has had wildfires. Yes, we have had lousy air quality due to wildfires. This is nothing new.

But this is like the mutant fire pollution strain that has NEVER been this bad. I actually purchased a smoke mask on Amazon so that I could exercise on my bicycle in the morning without trashing my lungs.

But lets say this thing filters, say, 50 percent. It purports to filter 95%. It purports to be fit for sport use.

It works. I'm not riding on an 150 AQI day without it. It works for a 150 AQI day. If it only filters half of what I'm breathing in, that is the difference between unhealthy and poor but not unhealthy.

Look at Friday. Look at Saturday Look at Sunday.

People are going to die, if that is true. This is literally, stay indoors, and you're probably getting lung cancer anyway, but you may not die immediately. I think I have resigned that myself and my family are doomed. I just don't want to go out this way. I probably will, if those numbers are accurate. They probably will, if those numbers are accurate. I hope they aren't.

This is not political. I have a lot of political ills towards our governor but this is probably the sole thing I don't blame him for. Wildfires are not political. They have affected both parties, and one can argue that they are the result of irresponsible forestry management for decades. I'm not sure I buy that, as California was largely unpopulated with the resources to practice responsible forestry management for, oh, how many hundreds of thousands of years?

What the hell is going on?

Please, no dems vs reps. Create a new thread for that if you must. This is a bigger issue.
 
Try living for a year in a tent next to a burn pit in a place where wood is the most common fuel for energy. Do your PT while sucking in that ungodly ****.

Yes, it sucks. Skipping a day or two of PT vs the long term impact to lung function is a decision only you cam make.
 
It's a forecast. Historically, have forecasts been accurate?
 
TCABM said:
Try living for a year in a tent next to a burn pit in a place where wood is the most common fuel for energy. Do your PT while sucking in that ungodly ****.

Yes, it sucks. Skipping a day or two of PT vs the long term impact to lung function is a decision only you cam make.
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asicer said:
It's a forecast. Historically, have forecasts been accurate?
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Well, I hope your're right. But I'm not counting on it. I ordered several more smoke mask for the fam. It's time to prepare contingency plans.
 
Since you mentioned California when it was unpopulated, I found this.

Approximately 1.8 million ha burned annually in California prehistorically (pre 1800). Our estimate of prehistoric annual area burned in California is 88% of the total annual wildfire area in the entire US during a decade (1994–2004) characterized as ‘‘extreme’’ regarding wildfires. The idea that US wildfire area of approximately two million ha annually is extreme is certainly a 20th or 21st century perspective. Skies were likely smoky much of the summer and fall in California during the prehistoric period.
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https://www.sierraforestlegacy.org/...search/FireHistory/FireHistory-Stephens07.pdf

So according to him, it wasn't that unusual. Who know how accurate the model is or if there are dueling models, but this is one person's research.

I know we hear about how the natives burned the undergrowth, but California is huge, and not that accesible in places, so I wonder how much influence this really had.
 
Call someplace paradise, kiss it goodbye!
 
Also, I looked at PurpleAir, and I don't seen numbers larger than about 350...
 
Is the HVAC even able to keep the smoke out of the house? Seems like every time you fire up the A/C, smoke would get drawn in the house.

My advice?

Go visit the burger girls and try to make one last attempt with VLL...Make the days count, you just never know man - okay I’m exaggerating, I think you’ll be fine and I’m sorry that things are so bad out that way. Wishing better weather soon!
 
Ryanb said:
Is the HVAC even able to keep the smoke out of the house? Seems like every time you fire up the A/C, smoke would get drawn in the house.

My advice?

Go visit the burger girls and try to make one last attempt with VLL...Make the days count, you just never know man - okay I’m exaggerating, I think you’ll be fine and I’m sorry that things are so bad out that way. Wishing better weather soon!
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Not sure how your HVAC works, but mine doesn't draw in outside air . . . Whether the house is effectively sealed is another discussion.
 
This is wild. I lived in OR for 25 years, and even since then, have not heard of such an event. I recall the normal fire or three this time of year, but nothing that cloaked the entire west coast in such smoke. When I went flying a few days ago, it was here, and it was all over everywhere as far as the eye could see.....probably 100 miles or more offshore. I'm lucky to be in maybe the only 50 sq miles in all of western WA/OR/CA that doesn't have smoke right now; it blew away yesterday after making a very short appearance that was nothing in comparison to the rest of the PNW. Probably coming back tomorrow, maybe into Saturday. My friends in the Lemoore/Hanford/Fresno area I believe had an AQI of around 900 the other day.......well off the charts. Some of the towns my wife and I grew up visiting in OR, up the McKenzie river are just gone as of yesterday. Wife's little sister evacuated and came up to stay with us. Some friends of ours also came here to get out of the smoke hole currently ongoing in SLE. We may have all our family and friends from OR camped out in our backyard by this weekend, vying for a breath of fresh air. Crazy
 
All California needs is an 8 or 9 on the Richter scale to make the place totally uninhabitable.
My entire extended family packed up and moved families and businesses out of California last year.
 
The State says you can't be inside because of COVID and the fires make outside unbearable so the only two places that are unsafe in California are inside and outside.
 
At first, I thought this was a clever anti-Covid satire.
 
This was the air in Southern California last weekend. It was bad then, with an inversion layer around 3-4,000 feet of smoke. Given how much smoke I flew through, I should have had a rack of beef ribs in the passenger seat to get a free smoke ring around the slab and me.

Since then, air has gotten a LOT worse over the week. No way am I flying this weekend...the smoke is so thick and sunlight so dim and orange colored, I have heard the term "apocalyptic" to describe it far too many times to count.
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Really really sad to see. Be safe out there folks!
 
But I thought CA was the best place to live and to never be questioned.
 
We also have warning labels that say walking into a Starbucks will expose you to chemicals that might give you cancer..

Not everything you read on an app or website is necessary "true"

This:
upload_2020-9-11_10-31-32.png
Seems a little alarmist.
 
Is it true that some of these fires are started by man? I'm hearing certain groups are responsible for making it worse.
 
rtk11 said:
This was the air in Southern California last weekend. It was bad then, with an inversion layer around 3-4,000 feet of smoke. Given how much smoke I flew through, I should have had a rack of beef ribs in the passenger seat to get a free smoke ring around the slab and me.

Since then, air has gotten a LOT worse over the week. No way am I flying this weekend...the smoke is so thick and sunlight so dim and orange colored, I have heard the term "apocalyptic" to describe it far too many times to count.
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That's nothing.. on the ILS coming into San Jose a few weeks ago. If you looked straight down under the wing you sometimes saw ground. Wild
upload_2020-9-11_10-36-3.png
 
austin757 said:
Is it true that some of these fires are started by man? I'm hearing certain groups are responsible for making it worse.
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My understanding was that this last batch was caused by mostly lightning strikes from the Aug 17 heat wave. Then this past weekend there was a gender reveal that sparked a fire and a tractor on a rural road that also caused one

While some people do have malicious intent, I haven't heard anything about this last batch being started intentionally


**It's interesting what the media hones in on. The derecho that devastated much of the middle US a few weeks ago got almost no media attention. But a bright red and orange sky has a lot of click potential
 
Sky at noon on Wednesday at my house in Santa Clara. Pretty much like this all day long. Evidently there was a thick marine layer underneah the smoke. Sunlight filtering through the smoke gave an orange cast to the marine layer, and both prevented enough sunlight to get throuh to warm the ground up, which, I read, is what tends to burn the marine layer off. Not much smoky smell, however.

c974140f5c766b90d9f796cb93348ace.jpg
 
If there's any positive to this it's that it's been much cooler
 
austin757 said:
Is it true that some of these fires are started by man? I'm hearing certain groups are responsible for making it worse.
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Human caused doesn't often mean arson, usually it simply means stupidity like the guy using an angle grinder in summer a few years ago who tried to burn down my Mom's house or the guy with a flat tire on the trailer starting the fire near Redding a while back.
 
Tantalum said:
We also have warning labels that say walking into a Starbucks will expose you to chemicals that might give you cancer..

Not everything you read on an app or website is necessary "true"

This:
View attachment 89844
Seems a little alarmist.
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Agree. People who smoke take a lot more into their lungs with one cigarette.
 
austin757 said:
Is it true that some of these fires are started by man? I'm hearing certain groups are responsible for making it worse.
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Sure, some are started by man. One was started at a gender reveal party, but the conspiracy theory going around is just that..
 
chartbundle said:
Human caused doesn't often mean arson, usually it simply means stupidity like the guy using an angle grinder in summer a few years ago who tried to burn down my Mom's house or the guy with a flat tire on the trailer starting the fire near Redding a while back.
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Had a fire start in my back yard a few years back. Was super super dry, and a jar got knocked onto the ground and broke. It landed just right, and the magnifying glass effect ignited the grass...or should I say tinder. There wasn't a speck of green. Caught the wooden fence on fire, a couple pine trees. Got it put out before it got to the field behind me. That would have made the news if it did. A few days later the new shoots started popping up, we got some rain, and my yard looked like nothing happened in a few weeks, well, other than the burnt trees.
 
We'll.. there's an answer to clean, safe energy generation that doesn't involve destroying the natural beauty of hundreds or thousands of acres of open land

But there's a very strong "nuclear=bad" sentiment out there, made worse by the dramatization of very preventable accidents like Chernobyl

San Onofre was shut down, and instead of finding a viable replacement or finding a way to meet the well-known and growing energy demands of the state they instead turn off the power and tell people not to use the air conditioning when it's 110° out

F that. We're governed by idiots.

But we have Tesla's! Nevermind where that electricity comes from or how those batteries are mind, manufactured, and disposed of
 
Tantalum said:
We'll.. there's an answer to clean, safe energy generation that doesn't involve destroying the natural beauty of hundreds or thousands of acres of open land

But there's a very strong "nuclear=bad" sentiment out there, made worse by the dramatization of very preventable accidents like Chernobyl
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Or Fukishima. Problem is when nuclear goes bad, it goes bad catastrophically. I'll be San Onofre aged out, those plants weren't meant to last forever. The real problem is nuclear plants can't be built without public monies, they're just too expensive. The public isn't likely to be too hot on nuclear any time soon. A little too much water under the bridge.
 
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