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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

#191

Post by aqme28 »

DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #177
colmvp wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no good timing for these fires but now just seems really bad. Can't socialize inside because of Covid, can't socialize outdoors because of smoke. Tough time to be in the West Coast.

(Please don't take this as making light of the situation in the PNW. I realize it's awful and don't wish it on anyone.) I can think of one, small silver lining to these fires: I recently read that Asian giant hornets had recently been found in the PNW, and if they weren't wiped out in a few years they'd become permanently entrenched. I find that prospect absolutely terrifying, so perhaps we'll get lucky and these fir…

More likely, these fires will divert resources away from eradicating them.

Re: Smoke has caused temperature forecasts to go crazy

#193

Post by marcosdumay »

DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #180
marcosdumay wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At São Paulo, it should be usual to have days where the maximum temperature is around 15°C, but most should reach high 20's. It should rain a lot of the time too, but with a small amount of water. But hot and dry days are not unheard of, they are just unusual.

I'm sorry you guys are experiencing this. I hope that my question isn't foolish, but is it possible that the deforestation in the Amazon is partially causing the reduced rain?

I don't think so.

First, the forest covering of the Amazon didn't change that much on the last few years. Don't let international press fool you, the forest isn't "all burning down". It's burning down a lot, but not that much.

But more importantly, the rain on that region is mostly from oceanic and local humidity (São Paulo is in a forest area, with plenty of rivers).

It rains less there in La Niña years. I don't know how abnormal the situation really is. But the heat is way more unusual than low humidity.

Re: Smoke has caused temperature forecasts to go crazy

#194

Post by rconti »

I drove from the Idaho panhandle to SF on Sunday. 1000 miles of abysmal air.

Most of the journey had reported 500+ AQI values, with some areas visibly much, much worse.

The worst was along the Columbia River gorge where the Deschutes flows into the Columbia (2nd photo in my tweet)

I'm not sensitive to poor air, and I was running my car on recirculated air, but at one point I actually started wearing my KN95 as I was driving.

https://twitter.com/reidconti/status/1305601474005590018?s=2...

Re: Smoke has caused temperature forecasts to go crazy

#195

Post by jldugger »

rconti wrote: post #194

I drove from the Idaho panhandle to SF on Sunday. 1000 miles of abysmal air. Most of the journey had reported 500+ AQI values, with some areas visibly much, much worse. The worst was along the Columbia River gorge where the Deschutes flows into the Columbia (2nd photo in my tweet) I'm not sensitive to poor air, and I was running my car on recirculated air, but at one point I actually started wearing my KN95 as I was…

> I drove from the Idaho panhandle to SF on Sunday

One does not simply walk into Mordor...

Re: Smoke has caused temperature forecasts to go crazy

#196

Post by clairity »

gonehome wrote: post #183
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.

Why not order a few HEPA filter air purifiers? I have 4 (5th is on its way). They work extremely well and if you pair them with a Temptop AQI sensor you can see how well in real time: https://www.temtopus.com/collections/temtopus-pm2-5-pm10-mon... Those temptop sensors are great. I've previously had awair, foobot, and purple sensors which all sucked in different ways. Really long thread about this here: https://www.r…

wow, the temtop website sent my laptop fans spinning with all the crap it tries to load, and that my content blockers went into overdrive blocking (especially, and inexplicably, from reviewsimportify.com).

still, i'm interested in getting a good pm2.5 monitor to pair with my air purifier, as air pollution is a much bigger issue than covid (air pollution certainly affects vast swaths of people across the world, persistently and largely invisibly, and is only getting worse over the decades).

is waiting for the wifi version (currently sold out) worth nearly twice the (sale) price of an m10?

Re: Smoke has caused temperature forecasts to go crazy

#197

Post by gonehome »

Balgair wrote: post #111
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.

Wow, corona viruses are ~0.1um in size, maybe a bit bigger. HEPA filters of appropriate quality then should trap many of the viruses. Thanks for the heads up!

Even smaller stuff gets bounced around at that level via Brownian motion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownian_motion

HEPA filters can catch really small stuff from this even if technically it could fit through.

Re: Smoke has caused temperature forecasts to go crazy

#198

Post by reissbaker »

ALittleLight wrote: post #157
derefr wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This propublica story has a lot of detail on the fires. They estimate that there are ~20 million acres overdue for burn and the fires this year are burning about a million acres. If I understood it correctly a million acres burning a year is about what's required for stasis, but the 20 million acre backlog will need to be burned too. https://www.propublica.org/article/they-know-how-to-prevent-...

At this point over 3 million acres [1] have burned in CA alone. So, seems like some of the 20 million acre backlog is getting burned through this year.

1: https://www.fire.ca.gov/daily-wildfire-report/

Re: Smoke has caused temperature forecasts to go crazy

#199

Post by ivalm »

bthallplz wrote: post #69
derwiki wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve been using an app that converts AQI to equivalent cigarettes smoked per day. It’s not perfect but it’s something I can wrap my head around as a meaningfully bad number.

Here's one such app, for people that are interested: https://shootismoke.app It's currently giving me 2.3 cigarettes per day, and I live a decent distance away from any of the fires (Sacramento, CA).

The latest update it is giving me is 5 months ago (I'm in San Diego, CA), that seems hardly relevant.

Re: Smoke has caused temperature forecasts to go crazy

#200

Post by gonehome »

clairity wrote: post #196
gonehome wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not order a few HEPA filter air purifiers? I have 4 (5th is on its way). They work extremely well and if you pair them with a Temptop AQI sensor you can see how well in real time: https://www.temtopus.com/collections/temtopus-pm2-5-pm10-mon... Those temptop sensors are great. I've previously had awair, foobot, and purple sensors which all sucked in different ways. Really long thread about this here: https://www.r…

wow, the temtop website sent my laptop fans spinning with all the crap it tries to load, and that my content blockers went into overdrive blocking (especially, and inexplicably, from reviewsimportify.com). still, i'm interested in getting a good pm2.5 monitor to pair with my air purifier, as air pollution is a much bigger issue than covid (air pollution certainly affects vast swaths of people across the world, persis…

The WiFi versions have negative value to me, the apps are usually terrible and they are almost impossible to pair (typically only have 2.4ghz radios).

I went with the P10 which does exactly what I want (AQI and PM2.5). It looks nice, it works, and is highly visible from a distance (even has a 6hr battery which makes it easy to move between rooms).

The only other one I'd consider is the one that does CO2.

As a bonus the Temtop sensors are less than half the price of their competitors while being at least twice as good.

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