Smoke from wildfires will have serious impacts Thursday in California, Washington, and eastern Canada. The smoke forecast for 10 p.m. PDT is above.
The map below depicts the air quality at 7:26 a.m. PDT Aug. 19, 2021, by AirNow.
News and opinion about wildland fire
Smoke from wildfires will have serious impacts Thursday in California, Washington, and eastern Canada. The smoke forecast for 10 p.m. PDT is above.
The map below depicts the air quality at 7:26 a.m. PDT Aug. 19, 2021, by AirNow.
The areas with the worst air quality and smoke Sunday will be Northern California, Southern Oregon, Northeast Washington, Idaho, Northern Utah, Northern Nevada, Northwest Wyoming, and Montana — basically the northwest quarter of the country.
Above is the air quality in the Western United States (ozone, PM2.5, and PM10) at 8:01 a.m. PDT August 15, 2021. By AirNow.
Below is the forecast for near-surface wildland fire smoke at 1 p.m. PDT Sunday August 15, 2021.
In case you missed it, read, Smoke linked to thousands of COVID-19 cases on West Coast.
To see other articles on Wildfire Today tagged “smoke”, including the most recent, click HERE.
Above is the forecast for the distribution of smoke from wildfires Saturday at 6 p.m. PDT August 14, 2021.
The map below shows the actual air quality in the Western U.S. at 6:46 p.m. PDT August 13, 2021, based on PM2.5 and PM10.
To see other articles on Wildfire Today tagged “smoke”, including the most recent, click HERE.
More than half of the 22 coronavirus fatalities in Calaveras County, CA were tied to smoke
From the San Francisco Chronicle, Aug. 13, 2021
The presence of wildfire smoke last year during the pandemic may have been responsible for at least 19,000 additional coronavirus cases on the West Coast, and 700 subsequent deaths, a new study shows.
The study, published Friday in the journal Science Advances, offers the most detailed accounting yet of how the devastating 2020 wildfire season is believed to have amplified the coronavirus outbreak. It traces increases in infections to periods of smoke in more than 50 counties in California, Oregon and Washington.
While a correlation between wildfire smoke and COVID-19 doesn’t prove causation, the study’s authors say the tie is no coincidence. Plenty of research since the start of the pandemic has suggested that exposure to smoke’s primary unhealthy component PM 2.5, which refers to particulate matter that is 2.5 micrometers in size or smaller, compromises people’s immunity and increases susceptibility to COVID-19. Scientists also hypothesize that the virus may be spread by the particles.
The team’s models crunched coronavirus numbers in 92 counties during non-smokey periods from March 15 to Dec. 16 and how these numbers changed when wildfire smoke brought particulate pollution. The area that the researchers examined covered 95% of the population in California, Oregon and Washington. They excluded areas that did not have sufficient data for modeling.
Above is the forecast for the distribution of smoke from wildfires at 6 p.m. PDT August 11, 2021.
Wildfires in California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, and Canada are creating smoke that is affecting air quality in most of the Western United States.