Update 7/26/2024: Well, this is a puzzler. Maybe I have mistaken some massive local fire for a plume of remote wildfire smoke.
As of 2 PM today, it’s back, and worse. Very strong smell of smoke, PM 2.5 readings in excess of 100 (in whatever units that is) in my yard, and the haze is visible when I look down the street.
And yet, official AQI readings for my area don’t show anything out-of-line. There are no reported wildfires near my home. I don’t hear any fire trucks.
In any case, the only thing I’m sure of is that the air in my neighborhood is smoky. By sight, by smell, and confirmed by a reasonably-accurate PM 2.5 meter. Either a house is burning down somewhere upwind of Vienna, VA, or we’re back to breathing forest fire smoke. We’ve had more than enough rain in the past few days to suppress any sort of local massive wildfires.
I have no idea why the only coverage I can find, of this most recent forest fire smoke plume, is in the New York Times. Perhaps I have mistaken some local source of smoke for a national issue. But a PM 2.5 reading of 100, visible haze, and noticeable smell all add up to some materially unhealthful air.
Original post follows:
Yep.
Yesterday afternoon, I noticed that it smelled like burning wood outside.
As did my wife.
Uh, notice the smell, that is.
I then went through a routine of checking my local Air Quality Index (AQI), which was in fact unhealthy due to high levels of PM 2.5 (particulates).
Then went to the map (above, from the NY Times), to see that, sure enough, I was smelling some “light” smoke from forest fires in the Pacific Northwest.
Maybe I never much noticed this in years gone by. Maybe. But the trend for U.S. annual wildfires is clearly pointing up.
Source: National Interagency Fire Center.
Normally, I’d blather on about global warming. And, for sure, increased incidence of forest fires is a likely outcome of that. And yet, I think we’re still waaay too early in the game for this to be driven by climate change.
And, indirectly, the U.S. EPA seems to agree. While they show the same trend that I showed above, they attribute it to cyclical climate factors that have led to a drying-out of U.S. western forest lands (reference EPA). (I read “cyclical” to mean that those factors are expected to reverse.) Though, obviously a general warming trend doesn’t help, even if the U.S. has seen only a slight degree of warming so far.
I’d say that the (sketchy) Canadian wildfire data seems to back that up. To a degree. If you include the period just prior to that shown above, the Canadian data show no strong upward trend. At least, not if you exclude that record 2023 season.
Source: Natural Resources Canada.
In any case, I invite you to fill in your favorite rationale for this strong recent upward trend in U.S. wildfires, as long as you find some way to blame the libs/eco-freaks for it. Including those wily Canadians.
Here’s the odd thing from this most recent experience: These smoke plumes appear to have highly variable density at ground level. Even after traveling across the country.
I really shouldn’t have been able to smell “light” smoke, from 3000 miles away. But at that time, my PM 2.5 meter showed almost three times the particulate level outside, as did various on-line AQI sites.
I believe that these smoke plumes have that much small-scale variability in them, even after crossing the country. They are a lumpy amalgamation of smoke, not a uniformly-dispersed smoke. This is among the many things that makes predictions of daily smoke hazards, from remote forest fires, difficult. My AQI forecast seems nowhere near as accurate as (say) the rain or temperature forecast, during wildfire season.
It was just last year that the air in New York was orange, for several days running, from Canadian forest fire smoke. And was merely hazardous to breathe, for a few more. Both the data and my hazy recollection say that this is a new phenomenon.
No matter how you slice it, and no matter whom you blame for it, poor air quality from remote wildfire smoke appears to be the East Coast summertime normal now.
