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Smoke has caused temperature forecasts to go crazy

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Re: Smoke has caused temperature forecasts to go crazy

#91

Post by hguant »

dghughes wrote: post #83

I'm in southeastern Canada years ago smoke from Quebec forest fires made the sky red. The soil where I am from is also red. It was like living on Mars. The fun ends quickly when your throat gets scratchy and there is no where you can go to escape it the air in your house has to come from outside too. I'm not looking forward to any smoke now my dad has COPD, IPF, is on oxygen, and he's elderly. If we get any amount of…

>I'm not looking forward to any smoke now my dad has COPD, IPF, is on oxygen, and he's elderly. If we get any amount of smoke here it will be the end of him. It's hard enough trying to keep him from contracting SARS-Cov-2 and developing covid-19

Seriously, get a HEPA rated air filter. Speaking as someone who has some serious lung issues, it's literally life changing/saving. Honeywell sells a number of models, cost is between 150-270 USD, depending on the size/amount of air you want moved.

Re: Smoke has caused temperature forecasts to go crazy

#92

Post by simlevesque »

dghughes wrote: post #83

I'm in southeastern Canada years ago smoke from Quebec forest fires made the sky red. The soil where I am from is also red. It was like living on Mars. The fun ends quickly when your throat gets scratchy and there is no where you can go to escape it the air in your house has to come from outside too. I'm not looking forward to any smoke now my dad has COPD, IPF, is on oxygen, and he's elderly. If we get any amount of…

Smoke from the west is affecting the weather in Montreal, Quebec right now.

Re: Smoke has caused temperature forecasts to go crazy

#93

Post by derefr »

londons_explore wrote: post #4
DocG wrote: post #3

Genuine question, are these fires big enough to stop them from happening for a while? Or should we expect another one next year? Edit: My original question was more in mind with does this have same effect as controlled burning / prescribed burning. Thank you all for replies :)

In % of land area burned, the fires are pretty small. Far less than 1% of the US land area burned this year. So, given the same weather conditions, you should expect more fires next year.

That isn’t the statistic I would expect to be pulled out here. Not all land area has any chance of catching/spreading a fire. Fires don’t really spread through rainforest; they definitely don’t spread through rocky areas; nor, really, through swampland; nor across mountain ranges; nor through irrigated cropland. (Nor through modern concrete cities, but city land-area is negligible.)

There’s definitely some portion of the US land mass that’s covered in either dry brush, dry underbrush, or dry grass. But that portion is pretty small, I would think. It could actually be that a fairly large portion of “potentially burnable” land-area catches fire each year. (That doesn’t imply anything about there being any less of it for next year, though; it recovers!)

Re: Smoke has caused temperature forecasts to go crazy

#94

Post by larrik »

naivedevops wrote: post #8

Meanwhile, in Sao Paulo we are getting to 34C (93F) every day, and even the nights have been extremely warm. And here at the southern hemisphere it's winter now.

What are winters normally like? You seem to be about as far from the equator as places like Miami, so I'm not sure what to expect.

Re: Smoke has caused temperature forecasts to go crazy

#95

Post by tdy721 »

CydeWeys wrote: post #67
xapata wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coal smoke in that case, not wood smoke. Coal is a terrible pollutant. If you survive the wood smoke, the literature suggests you'll be back to normal in a couple weeks.

Source? What makes combustion particulates from coal substantially worse than combustion particulates from wood?

Sulfur is a big one. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal

Leading to, for example, acid rain.

Also just a guess, coal is a finer particulate matter than wood, I think that might give more particles off. Wood dust, nope, coal dust? Hell no. Also radioactive!

Re: Smoke has caused temperature forecasts to go crazy

#96

Post by derefr »

derwiki wrote: post #19
stelfer wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but OTOH CA will likely start to change it's forestry management practices as a result of this. The distribution of surface fuel is a joint effect of drought and policy/management.

Why do you say likely? I would have said that after the Camp Fire and I would have been wrong.

The less forest that there is left after the fire, the easier it is to clear the rest and replant with tree species that are better at holding onto water in drought conditions, and/or species that are hardier in the face of heat exposure.

Re: Smoke has caused temperature forecasts to go crazy

#97

Post by Wohlf »

dthal wrote: post #29

This blog post went up on Saturday, September 12. It says: >> MUCH cleaner air will push in by 4 PM Sunday over the coastal zone and will just reach Seattle late in the afternoon >> By 1 AM Monday, air quality will be hugely better in western Washington As of now (Tuesday) there is no sign of clearing. Here in Seattle we are still in the "very unhealthy" range for AQI.

How appropriate, a blog post about weather forecasts being inaccurate is itself inaccurate. Same down here in the Willamette Valley, I'd like to be able to breathe again.

Re: Smoke has caused temperature forecasts to go crazy

#98

Post by mensetmanusman »

aaomidi wrote: post #61
mensetmanusman wrote: post #58

Use room air purifiers with hepa quality, those remove particles down to Furnace filters are not designed to filter as much, or else they would need changing too often and put too much pressure on the furnace motors when people forget, which is a hazard in its own right.

You can find furnace filters with higher ratings.

True, but they don’t keep the air clean nearly as fast as putting room air purifiers near people (closer to source) unless you have an HVAC that is so powerful you feel wind inside..

Re: Smoke has caused temperature forecasts to go crazy

#99

Post by davidw »

gdubs wrote: post #72
tyleo wrote: post #2

I’m in the midsts of this right now and it’s depressing. I spent yesterday morning with a sore throat and itchy eyes and most of the afternoon hopelessly driving hours away for a box fan and furnace filter (I finally found them). All the while I should have been working. Some of my coworkers have complained of week-long headaches. If anyone else is suffering from this: you are not alone.

Willamette Valley here, and I feel you. Was really investing a lot of my optimism in the rain that was talked about for today, for over a week now — which doesn’t look like it’s gonna happen. This has been a long, long week.

Here in Bend it's pretty awful too. We live here because we love the outdoors, and we've been locked up inside since Friday. The kids are going stir crazy. Everyone was getting excited when the AQI dipped a bit under 200 yesterday (still rated "unhealthy") because we had been over 500. Now it's back up though, and they're talking about maybe things getting better by Thursday.

Re: Smoke has caused temperature forecasts to go crazy

#100

Post by formerly_proven »

xapata wrote: post #28
malwarebytess wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worry about the consequences of prolonged exposure. There is historical precedent that shows we should be concerned. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog_of_London

Coal smoke in that case, not wood smoke. Coal is a terrible pollutant. If you survive the wood smoke, the literature suggests you'll be back to normal in a couple weeks.

Today in HackerNews: Don't worry about that pesky wood smoke, it'll all be fine, folks!
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