Forums >Suggestions and Feature Requests>Wildfire Smoke/Poor AQ as a weather condition
rectumdamnnearkilledem
Mostly kidding...but also sorta not kidding. Every Summer this seems to be a thing. I don't even live anywhere near any wildfires, but that smoke seems to like to rise straight up, fly over the great lakes, then get dumped-downwards.
Getting the wind knocked out of you is the only way to
remind your lungs how much they like the taste of air.
~ Sarah Kay
Same here. AQI 108 and a brown haze over the lake where I run, in Eastern Mass, 3,000 miles east of Oregon
Runners run
You guys are really getting the brunt of it on the East Coast. Do you have the eerie orange light in the morning and evening, too? No blue skies, in spite of minimal clouds. It's like someone shifted the color balance of everything.
Yup. It's been the rainiest July like ever and on one of the first real sunny days of the month the sky is orange and smells like smoke. <this is fine gif>
Problem Child
It sucks. You learn to deal with it. Happens every year. Similar to snow being dangerous.
Many of us aren't sure what the hell point you are trying to make and no matter how we guess, it always seems to be something else. Which usually means a person is doing it on purpose.
VDOT 53.37
5k18:xx | Marathon 2:55:22
Between weather, smoke, Gypsy moths (at least I'm no longer finishing runs covered in caterpillar shit or running through deep puddles of shit under trees)...I'm really over this year's plagues tag-teaming with Covid. Races are somewhat back, so at least 2021 has that going for it.
And snow is a weather condition included in our run log. Smoke has a marked effect on lung function and run quality, like humidity -- also included in the run log. It's a useful metric to track, especially as a condition that is present with increasing regularity and affecting an entire continent.
Trails
Here in NE OK the AQ today is 127. Sun looks weird in AM and PM drives.
Welcome to my world last year in California. That AQI number hasn't been a problem for us ... yet. But it will. It was so bad last year that most people (runners) I know bought AQI meters for their houses and at least one or two air purifiers as well. I learned all about what kind of filter was in my central air furnace/ac and it's MERV rating. It sucked, it was a MERV1, I replaced it with 9-rated filters but only for use when the AQI number gets in the 90's or above. Otherwise I'm running MERV 5 filters due to the reduced airflow from the 9's because my furnace/ac wasn't designed for that. I keep the furnace fan running in the background when AQI starts to get a little excessive. Also, I like Purple Air (website name is very appropriate!) as well as Airnow. Right now we're in the 30's for AQI. FerFockSake, I never knew anything about this stuff before last year!
not bad for mile 25
Weird to me that California has AQI ranging from single digits to 300+ in adjacent sensors.
ETA: Not seeing that so much now. Maybe it was my zoom level.
Same here in the upper left. (Except for the part about AC, because not so many people have it here, which was a whole other problem a few weeks ago.) Great air so far, but I know our time will come. When it was at its worst for a week or so last year, I was certainly glued to the Purple Air & AirNow sites, and also noticed for the first time that Apple Maps has the AQI in the lower right corner with the temp. I stopped running when it went >150 - snapped my PB 250-day streak! I don't know anyone who bought AQI meters, but I know some folks who MacGyver'd air purifiers by duct-taping furnace filters to box fans.
Dave
Weird to me that California has AQI ranging from single digits to 300+ in adjacent sensors. ETA: Not seeing that so much now. Maybe it was my zoom level.
Not sure which site you're using, but can say this about purpleair. Each device has 2 sensors in it and depending on how close those to readings are they will give a reliability rating (percentage?). In addition, the number reported will be the higher of the two. You can drill down on each sensor and actually see what the individual sensors are reporting. Like most sensors, they need periodic maintenance and not everyone knows this. Last summer ours had one sensor reporting 400+ AQI and the other at 10. Unplugged it and sprayed it with compressed air and everything was back to normal.
Of, course, in the SF Bay Area we have micro climates and depending on those parameters you can get pretty divergent readings/conditions.
Ray
AQI 139...dreadmill time. Running on the TM in July in Michigan just feels so wrong.
Here in the Chicago area it was bad on Saturday. The morning was very humid. I went for my run around 8am and it was already 78 degrees, humidity made it feel like upper 80's, plus the AQI was 120. The sky was a creamy white color. The first post in this thread with the Fire and Smoke map is cool - I never knew so many fires were going on.
AQI 200+ over the weekend. Treadmills aren’t an option for me. Just gotta live with it. Some people ran early in the morning when it was slightly better. Others will drive 2 hours. Others will just run in it for less than some arbitrary amount of time.