@bgbg4us The Camp fire is still burning (60% contained as of this morning). I think it’s mostly now burning up in the forest to the east of Paradise rather than towards Chico. Cal Fire has incident reports and updates on their website - http://www.fire.ca.gov/general/firemaps.
My weather app for the past 2 days in Walnut Creek said “very unhealthy air quality”. Today it ((just) reads “unhealthy air quality”. However, the air quality seems to get worse as the temps rise and the winds increase throughout the day. Current weather forecast is rain on Wednesday and Friday. (Yesterday’s forecast was rain on Friday only but a couple of days before that it showed rain on W-Th-F.)
Smoke seems better today in Oakland and Purple Air confirms. We also have some colder air due to the fog that we now have, so I’m thinking that’s helping, too. Let’s hope this is a continuing trend and that the fires are fully contained by EOM as they’re predicting.
Smoke is a bit better today in Palo Alto. I hope next week’s predicted rain actually shows up!
One benefit of the smoke is my D is on her way down to our house. She has next week off and was planning on spending her days riding her horse. No riding is going to be happening in her area so she decided to come home early. Her original plan was to come down Wednesday night. We will get a nice longer visit with her and her fiancé.
I’m so saddened by the devastation up north. I can’t stress enough how important those N95 masks are. I still had a box from last year’s Thomas fire and stuck one in my HS jr. daughter’s backpack. It came in handy when another brush fire popped up nearby and snojw blew in their direction.
DH and I will be in SF next week and I will have my masks. I love waking in the city and I hope the air doesn’t deter me.
I forget if it was mentioned in this thread before, but even if it was I’ll reiterate: If your N95 or N99 mask is comfortable and easy to breathe in, it doesn’t fit, air is leaking, and you’re not getting the filtering you want. Make sure it sits right against your nose with no holes; many have a metal piece you need to bend around the bridge of the nose to adjust the fit.
Rain really helped. Air quality is fine at present. Am still giving out the masks
Just in case they know anyone who can use them… or will save for the future.
This is going to sound like a dumb question. Are CA fires pretty common? The reason I ask is, I’m a senior considering schools in northern CA, but I have pretty weak lungs due to medical issues. So I am wondering if it wouldn’t be a good idea to apply given the health risk.
My dad lives in Southern CA, it seems like the fires aren’t as common down there, though.
From So Cal, fire is sadly common down here. Last year we had the Thomas fire in Ventura County which burned for a month, as I recall. Malibu has frequent fires. There are often fires in the Angeles National Forest around Big Bear Lake and Arrowhead Lake which are 100 miles from the city but the wind blows the smoke westward to us.
I read today, and I wish I could remember the link, that 130 or so people have been killed in fires due to PG &E or SoCal Edison. This in the past several years. This is shocking to me and I do not understand why those companies are still treated with kid gloves, like they aren’t to blame. This is outrageous.
The whole West has fire and smoke issues these days. In Washington they are more in the summer, but the air quality in late summer (like August) can be just awful.
Yes, even areas not served by PG&E & SoCal… there are other causes of fires as well.
@equationlover it’s only been the last 2 years that I’ve recalled where huge fires in the north have permeated to such a wide area. Even during the Oakland Hills Fire back in the early 90s, they never had to cancel classes at UC-Berkeley like they did this week, so I would say that the likelihood of another huge fire in NorCal if this magnitude is low. (But don’t quote me on this).
^Unfortunately, I don’t think this is a random event. Unless measures are taken to alleviate the conditions, it becomes increasingly likely that we will see more of these fires, getting worse and worse.
My younger daughter is back in northern California. She said the rainy season has begun and the air is much better than it was last weekend.
I’ve read people have to try to avoid the toxins that are in the runoff of burned areas—another hazard.
Back when I went to college and law school in OR and northern CA decades ago, can’t remember the fires being nearly as bad.
^^^ Let’s say most of us had contact with our college years in the late 70’s earls 80’s.
In 1980 the population of California totaled 23.67 million
In 2017 the population of California totaled 39.57 million
All those people need to live somewhere. And in the process of doing life, stuff happens…especially when you now have folks living in more rural areas and add in the effects of bad tinder source management.
Wouldn’t the Paradise fire have been about as bad for the Bay Area, even if nobody lived in the burn area and there hadn’t been even one house burned? I’ve lived in the Bay Area for over thirty years, and it’s only been in the last couple of years that we had days at a time of smoky air. Up until about five years ago, it wasn’t a thing.
^^yes, definitely. The 5/6 year drought has left a lot of dead/weakened trees, which provide excellent kindling for lightning strikes (or electrical wire shorts). And the unusual offshore winds pushed the smoke thru the Delta into the Bay Area. So the smoke would have occurred regardless of the settlements in the Chico area. But once the air shifted beginning on late Monday of this week, the air became much better in a matter of hours. And yes, the rain almost completely cleared it out, but the rain came with plenty of strong onshore winds blowing the smoke back to the central valley. (The strong onshore winds would have made the Bay Area air much cleaner even without the rain.)
I was in NYC for a week or so recently. There was a day when the air was strangely hazy, like a typical hot and hazy day in August, only it was very cold and had snowed two days before. Turns out it was from the CA wildfires. The smoke plume drifted across the whole continent.
Right, @bluebayou, and my point is, I’ve lived in the Bay Area since 1980 (when, as dietz199 noted, the California population was much lower) and never until last year did we have these terrible smoky weeks caused by wildfires. Our smoky weeks are not caused by population, but by firestorms that we never used to have.