O, the weather outside is...

[Jeff V]

I just checked the forecast for the Philippines. There's almost no rain in the 15 day forecast here (drought season!) and rain every day there (rainy season?) Only 2 days in the next 15 are classified as "light rain", the rest are heavy rain and strong storms. And I was thinking I needed a hat for the sun...

[Kraken]

We're right on the boundary between smoky and not. We've had off-and-on hazy days for the past couple of weeks, but the smoke is indistinguishable from high pollen and/or humidity. I hope that eastern boundary stays right where it is, or drifts a little to the west. It wouldn't have to move very far east for Boston to suffer the same misery as NYC.

[Unagi]

The haze/smoke was surprising bad in CT today...smells like smoke outside and was so bad this evening that it made the sun disappear. I was outside around 5pm and noticed that the sun was so hazed out that I could look directly at the pale red spot in the sky. Over the next ten minutes, it got so bad that I could no longer see the sun at all. Crazy

Just be careful. You may think you can stare at the sun in this situation, but my understanding is that you still shouldn't and that you can still be damaging your eye. The brightness is diminished, but not the ultraviolet.

You almost made it read as if you stared at the sun for 10 minutes... that's not good.

[Lassr]

When I was driving into Huntsville yesterday, it was extremely hazy, looked like the mountains were behind a smoke screen, and I was wondering if something big was on fire. Read last night that it was the smoke from the Canada fire. Made it down here quickly.

[Madmarcus]

I'm screwed no matter what. We're having two rooms and two hallways repainted. So I can either have the windows open to help with sanding dust and paint fumes or close the windows to keep out the particulates.

[Max Peck]

The fire smoke haze here is off the charts this week. The public-facing air quality rating only goes from 1 to 10, then pegs at "+ (Very High Risk)" for anything over 10, but the internal rating used by Environment Canada scientists was up to 14 yesterday, whatever that actually means in terms of how much worse it actually is.

[disarm]

The haze/smoke was surprising bad in CT today...smells like smoke outside and was so bad this evening that it made the sun disappear. I was outside around 5pm and noticed that the sun was so hazed out that I could look directly at the pale red spot in the sky. Over the next ten minutes, it got so bad that I could no longer see the sun at all. Crazy

Just be careful. You may think you can stare at the sun in this situation, but my understanding is that you still shouldn't and that you can still be damaging your eye. The brightness is diminished, but not the ultraviolet.

You almost made it read as if you stared at the sun for 10 minutes... that's not good.

Definitely not the case... noticed pale red spot in the sky where the sun should be and was surprised. Looked up again a bit later and even that spot was totally obscured. I don't make a habit of staring directly at the sun because as you said, that would be bad.

[Rumpy]

The fire smoke haze here is off the charts this week. The public-facing air quality rating only goes from 1 to 10, then pegs at "+ (Very High Risk)" for anything over 10, but the internal rating used by Environment Canada scientists was up to 14 yesterday, whatever that actually means in terms of how much worse it actually is.

Means they probably have to rethink the scale. It's one of those things that probably look fine until you put it into practice, especially when you consider Canada hasn't had it this bad before. This is proof, if anything, of global warming.

Every year, our fire restrictions seem to go up earlier. Locally, we've just finished a 10+ day heatwave of 30C/86F, which is very unusual for us. Hot and sticky by noon, heat staying until the early morning hours, you'd think we were living further south. We also haven't had rain. We've also had a long and cold winter.

[Max Peck]

The scale is probably fine. Showing it as 1-10 on the website is probably mostly a PR decision, because people relate to a fixed range of values. The actual rating system goes higher, but it's probably valid to say at some point all the public needs to know is that it's very, very bad. I doubt that there are more precautions necessary on my part when it's a 14 rather than a 10+.

[AWS260]

The view from my building, yesterday afternoon (it's even worse today) and normally.

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[Kraken]

We're right on the boundary between smoky and not. We've had off-and-on hazy days for the past couple of weeks, but the smoke is indistinguishable from high pollen and/or humidity. I hope that eastern boundary stays right where it is, or drifts a little to the west. It wouldn't have to move very far east for Boston to suffer the same misery as NYC.

Yesterday Wife was in the city, where she reported that visibility was poor. I was home, 15 miles to the south, and the haze was barely noticeable.

[hitbyambulance]

you all getting the pain we've experienced on the left coast for the past half-decade+. imo summer is now a season to be dreaded and endured, rather than enjoyed - we get Smaugust and Smoketember every year (although last year we had an extended smoke hover event in October, for some stupid reason).

[Daehawk]

Nope. Same old seasons they've always been. Though I do feel summer is hotter. Maybe its all in my mind. But I think its hotter.

[Rumpy]

The scale is probably fine. Showing it as 1-10 on the website is probably mostly a PR decision, because people relate to a fixed range of values. The actual rating system goes higher, but it's probably valid to say at some point all the public needs to know is that it's very, very bad. I doubt that there are more precautions necessary on my part when it's a 14 rather than a 10+.

Well, I said rethink because, while a fixed-range is all well and good, if that system doesn't allow for showing something beyond that to show the actual range, it's not that useful. It'd be better with an expanded range with flexibility to take into account for these extremes. I think the current system was built when we didn't have to worry about these things much. But now it's very much a reality.

Nope. Same old seasons they've always been. Though I do feel summer is hotter. Maybe its all in my mind. But I think its hotter.

Nah, it wouldn't surprise me if it was. With our recent heatwave, it lasted longer and was more intense for a longer period of time, lasting into the night, which is untypical for us.

[Max Peck]

I understand what you're saying, it's just that I don't know that the general public can make any meaningful distinction between "Level 11 - Very High Risk" and "Level 14 - Very High Risk." If you need to take the exact same precautions at level 14 as you do at level 11, then there's no real need to distinguish between them for purposes of air quality warnings, at least until we need a category above "Very High Risk".

It's kind of like how the Meteorological-Industrial Complex backed off the representation of wind chill in terms of heat loss (W/m²) and switched back to expressing it as "feels like <temperature>" instead. Scientifically, it's a less rigorous description but it's relatable for the general public. People intuitively understand that "feels like -20C" is cold, but most don't know what to make of "heat loss of 1400 W/m²" even if you add effect cues like "shivering" to the description.

[jztemple2]

This is getting serious!

[Holman]

Today Philadelphia wasn't nearly as bad as NYC (which looks like Blade Runner 2049), but there was a definite sense of smoke covering everything. I spent the day in an air conditioned building, and when I stepped outside everything smelled like being next to a campfire.

[jztemple2]

From Yale Climate Connections, The massive smoke plume choking the northeast U.S. is what climate change looks like

Fire is a natural feature of North American ecology. However, dangerous fire weather has surged more quickly than expected as a serious consequence of our human-warmed climate. In regions where fire is a perennial part of the climate, such as the western U.S. and Canada, rising temperatures have prolonged the fire season, allowing fires to burn more widely and for longer periods. It’s this seasonal fingerprint that jumps out as the prime climate-change signal in the southern Canada fires and the bizarre, ongoing smoke episode of early June in the northeast U.S.

Even the colossal fires that torched parts of the U.S. West and Midwest — including Chicago— during the timber-harvest runs of the late 19th and early 20th century tended to occur in summer or autumn, not in late spring.

Fires and floods can be difficult to project in climate-change simulations, because they depend not only on atmospheric changes but also on aspects of the built landscape (e.g., an expansion of paved areas that allow water to flow more readily, or an increase in homes in the wildland-urban interface). But we can look more directly at changes in fire weather days — those days that pass various risk thresholds of low humidity, high heat, and strong wind.

In an analysis released May 23 that draws on data from 476 U.S. weather stations, Climate Central showed that fire weather days are occurring over longer, more intense fire seasons, especially in the western United States.

“Southern California, Texas, and New Mexico have experienced some of the greatest increases in fire weather days each year, with some areas now seeing around two more months of fire weather compared to a half-century ago,” the report noted. It added: “Even small increases in fire weather in the East, which has nearly 28 million homes located in zones prone to burn, puts more people at risk.”

Another recent study took a global look at potential changes in fire weather this century, using the Canadian Fire Weather Index and drawing on output from the suite of climate models used in the most recent IPCC assessment, a sweeping report periodically issued by the world’s top climate scientists. The projections suggest that the average fire duration could triple, and average fire intensity could jump by 31% — but with much regional variation — for a higher-end amount of global warming (3°C above preindustrial values).

[Alefroth]

Unless you really, really like being constantly around a lot of people,

(shudder)

I might agree to be constantly around a few people to take a European river cruise.

[jztemple2]

Unless you really, really like being constantly around a lot of people,

(shudder)

I might agree to be constantly around a few people to take a European river cruise.

Agreed. I watched a documentary about a Rhine cruise from Viking and it looked quite nice.

The woman who lives across from us recently was on a Caribbean cruise and was wearing a t-shirt showing stats about the ship... length so and so, beam so and so, number of "guests"... 6700

[Rumpy]

I understand what you're saying, it's just that I don't know that the general public can make any meaningful distinction between "Level 11 - Very High Risk" and "Level 14 - Very High Risk." If you need to take the exact same precautions at level 14 as you do at level 11, then there's no real need to distinguish between them for purposes of air quality warnings, at least until we need a category above "Very High Risk".

Right, and I understand too. But at the same time, the public surely would have a hard time making the distinction between 10 and 10+, to the point that it starts to feel meaningless. I think there needs to be a bit more granularity, as the scale seems to fall short of our current reality of changing climates.

I've seen several pictures today of the air looking like a Martian atmosphere.

[Smoove_B]

New York City has set their record for worst air quality since those records began in 1999. That AQI of 402 was measured at a sensor on the Upper East Side of Manhattan at 3:30pm. Safe to say this is a once-in-a-lifetime bad air quality event.

"Once in a lifetime" is...probably going to make this Tweet look extra foolish soon enough.

[Punisher]

Our past few days it's been pretty clear in the mornings and then absolutely post apocalyptic yellow in the afternoon.
I am going to try taking pics and maybe sending my drone up if it happens tomorrow.
My wife works about 10 miles away and she has had bouts of pitch black darkness. The 1st day she did she called and we were completely clear at the time.
Movie makers would save money to get a bunch film down now instead of worrying about cgi later..

[Max Peck]

It looks like things are getting back to normal here. The current AQI is 3 (Low Risk) and the hourly forecast is predicting that the smoke will be subsiding overnight.

[jztemple2]

We had severe weather this afternoon in our county, including a possible tornado touchdown. Just another day in the rainy season

[jztemple2]

Good article with an excellent accompanying embedded video, Fort Myers Beach recovery slow after Ian, long road still ahead. It was posted last week and shows how far Fort Meyers Beach still has to go, but also what has been done. It's a measure of how bad things were there that the Publix supermarket that was destroyed at the end of September last year has just finally reopened two weeks ago.

[The Meal]

The current AQI is 3 (Low Risk)

Wait, is your AQI on your metric 1-10+ scale or in our NYC=402 freedom units?

[Max Peck]

The current AQI is 3 (Low Risk)

Wait, is your AQI on your metric 1-10+ scale or in our NYC=402 freedom units?

The Environment Canada website shows the AQHI (I mistyped it as AQI previously) using 11 numeric values (1-10 and "more than 10"), which are tiered within 4 risk levels (Low, Moderate, High, Very High). The risk levels are what determine appropriate precautions while the numeric values look pretty and can be used to see trends over time if you pay attention to how they change (they provide hourly data for the previous 24 hours).

This is how it's presented:


Anything in the Very High Risk category is just displayed as "10+" even though the boffins do assign an actual rating. So on Tuesday the website showed 10+ while CBC reported that the actual rating was 14. This whole discussion I've been having with Rumpy about whether the rating scale is adequate is really about a display issue on the website -- the actual scale seems to extend as high as required in order to capture whatever data they're using to calculate the AQHI.


Currently, the 24-hour history nicely captures how the smoke receded, with the AQHI dropping from 10+ yesterday morning to 1 this morning.

[LordMortis]

New York City has set their record for worst air quality since those records began in 1999. That AQI of 402 was measured at a sensor on the Upper East Side of Manhattan at 3:30pm. Safe to say this is a once-in-a-lifetime bad air quality event.

"Once in a lifetime" is...probably going to make this Tweet look extra foolish soon enough.

We've been getting danger warnings from local news and on our phones since Tuesday. I guess Max' normal is now on the other side of the lakes.

https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/ ... 297183007/

Only Delhi, India, had worse air quality than Detroit among major cities as of 10 a.m. Wednesday morning, with an air quality index of 191 compared to Detroit's 164. New York City followed close behind with 161. These numbers fluctuate throughout the day, though Detroit consistently ranked in the Top 5 on Wednesday morning.

My phone says 165 this morning. I could see a light haze maybe 1/4 mile away from air pollution but you only notice it if you pay attention. OtOH, 20 minutes of walking (less than the 60+ since my accident) and my PT exercises are enough to tire me out. I was wondering why and I suppose this has something to do with it.

[Max Peck]

I did a bit more digging and found that Wikipedia has some good information on air quality indices in general as well as Canada's Air Quality Health Index in particular.

[The Meal]

the AQHI (I mistyped it as AQI previously)

Ah, good. I was worried two places were using the same acronym for two different measuring systems.

[Max Peck]

I'm used to thinking of it as an air quality index and hence drop the H in the acronym if I'm not careful. If I understand the descriptions of the two systems, a key difference between the AQI and the AQHI is that the AQI is trying to characterize the severity of the pollution itself while the AQHI is trying to characterize the health impact of the pollution. If I'm reading the descriptions correctly, the AQI uses a linear scale while the AQHI appears to be logarithmic, which would explain the apparent differences in scale (1-500 vs 1-10+).

[Rumpy]

Found this very interesting. A meteorologist from the Tri-State area did some research and found this:

[Unagi]

Found this very interesting. A meteorologist from the Tri-State area did some research and found this:

This made me look up the definition of Pall.

One of them is:
a cloth spread over a coffin, hearse, or tomb.

i.e. Pallbearers ...

Then that made me think of the cigarettes: Pall Mall
Interesting.

[Rumpy]

Fixed the image link. I wasn't linking to the image itself, but rather the imgur link.

[Octavious]

I ended up staying home yesterday as I just didn't even want to deal with it. Today seems a lot better thankfully. We're supposed to go to a concert on Sunday. Seems like it should be better? I feel bad as the tickets are a gift so not going would not be ideal. I highly doubt it gets cancelled as it seems to be getting better?

[Smoove_B]

I ended up staying home yesterday as I just didn't even want to deal with it. Today seems a lot better thankfully. We're supposed to go to a concert on Sunday. Seems like it should be better? I feel bad as the tickets are a gift so not going would not be ideal. I highly doubt it gets cancelled as it seems to be getting better?

It's looks better in our area today, but the air quality is still "Unhealthy"; seems to be much, much worse in central and south parts of the state today.

Allegedly going to be better by Saturday, but trying to predict these things can be a bit difficult - case in point, they originally told us it would be better by today; now it's going to extend through tomorrow.

Also, nothing is getting cancelled. Enjoy your freedom particulates.

[Octavious]

I ended up staying home yesterday as I just didn't even want to deal with it. Today seems a lot better thankfully. We're supposed to go to a concert on Sunday. Seems like it should be better? I feel bad as the tickets are a gift so not going would not be ideal. I highly doubt it gets cancelled as it seems to be getting better?

It's looks better in our area today, but the air quality is still "Unhealthy"; seems to be much, much worse in central and south parts of the state today.

Allegedly going to be better by Saturday, but trying to predict these things can be a bit difficult - case in point, they originally told us it would be better by today; now it's going to extend through tomorrow.

Also, nothing is getting cancelled. Enjoy your freedom particulates.

They have been cancelling sporting events, but those are easy to reschedule. I'm not exactly a huge Ed Sheeran fan, but it's free and not easy to reschedule.

[Rumpy]

Then that made me think of the cigarettes: Pall Mall
Interesting.

Oh yeah, definitely interesting. Shroud-like. I think the name of the cigarettes refers to a place in London, and we all know how foggy it tends to be.

I ended up staying home yesterday as I just didn't even want to deal with it. Today seems a lot better thankfully. We're supposed to go to a concert on Sunday. Seems like it should be better? I feel bad as the tickets are a gift so not going would not be ideal. I highly doubt it gets cancelled as it seems to be getting better?

It's hard to say, because for a few days it felt like it was better over here, but then as of yesterday we could smell more smoke, so it's highly dependent on which way the wind is blowing.

[hitbyambulance]

Allegedly going to be better by Saturday, but trying to predict these things can be a bit difficult - case in point, they originally told us it would be better by today; now it's going to extend through tomorrow.

you'll get used to the 'hopium' pushed by the media - they will often state 'oh the smoke is going away tomorrow' only to find out tomorrow 'well it's going to actually be tomorrow' and the next day 'probably by the end of the weekend' and then it's by next week...