Forest fire smoke

There is no immediate danger in my area but for those of you that hve never lived in a forrested area it is amazing how far the smoke travels and how dense it can be. The last three days this is what it looks like going to work in the morning. Visibility at less than 1/2 mile and a picture from my works front door to the highway about 300 feet. The fires are 30 miles away.

Haze and smoke way up above you in semi coastal Washington.  It has become foggy and misty, so I am hopeful the mess will wash out of the air before long.  Hang in..

There are a bunch of forest fires up north in Manitoba and Saskatchewan and the weather has shifted, bringing that smoke south. It isn't visible, but I can smell it now and it's supposed to get worse all weekend. The AQI at our house is only 54 but up in Ely it's 164. I really need a weekend of getting things done in the yard now that we're approaching our last frost date!

ETA: Weather Service just dropped this infographic, so I figured I'd add it to my post:

Yup, there's been a fair bit of fire activity and we've had a lot of smoke in the air with a number of recent days with smoke / air quality advisories.  One large provincial park at the eastern border of Manitoba has been closed and there have been fire bans.  That said, I generally live in a news-free zone, so I'm not up to date.

I just saw that Saskatchewan has declared a state of emergency over forest fires.  If you know the geography of the Canadian Shield, where the boreal forest exists, the southern boundary is sort of Lake of the Woods (so MB / MN / ON borders) and heads in a northwesterly direction, so the forest in Saskatchewan is considerably farther north than here in Manitoba.

Thanks for sharing the graphic Christopher.  We start driving south on Saturday so perhaps we'll get out of it....

The morning sun through the smoke!

Any sign of smoke is worrying - if the wind conditions are right we can get smoke and ashfall from a good 500 km away.  We had a dust storm last week and that ended up about 1500 km away, so if smoke etc rises far enough into the atmosphere, it can end up anywhere.  I follow the weather forecasts and keep an eye on the local emergency services reports.  Go-bag at the ready, just in case.

Yeah. These fires are about 4-500 miles (6-800 km) from my home.

Yesterday the wind had shifted and the band from Fargo to Winnipeg was getting the worst of it. Today it's shifted back and I'm in the literally worst section. Most of the sensors in the purple blob show an AQI of 220-270, the nearest one to my house (at the green arrow) reads 255. I'm sure hoping the Thunder Bay sensor is broken because it's reporting 758!

This smoke is really bad for lungs and over-all health.

Please start a new trend and get the really good breathing masks for industrial use and wear one if you're out in it! The kind that look like gas masks.

An N95 mask will get some of it, and since I can get those small enough to fit me, I will use one, but I am aware there are things in smoke an N95 won't stop.

I consider myself lucky that I have not been hit by this smoke this year, but in years past it has reached us and I did not like it at all.  The sky turned white and there was a hint of smoke that never seemed to go away.

My thoughts go out to everyone who is impacted by this!



Eric

On May 31, we outran the smoke somewhere in Iowa.

It is still around, but not nearly as bad as it was before our trip.

Jay Angler wrote:This smoke is really bad for lungs and over-all health.

Please start a new trend and get the really good breathing masks for industrial use and wear one if you're out in it! The kind that look like gas masks.

An N95 mask will get some of it, and since I can get those small enough to fit me, I will use one, but I am aware there are things in smoke an N95 won't stop.

You’re thinking of a p100 mask. After listening to this radiolab episode from last summer, I’m pretty much on the same page.
https://overcast.fm/+ABGanSSFaNU