Orange Skies

[AlanLichty]

@MonikaC wondered what our skies looked like so I wandered out to my deck and took a shot of the sun this afternoon. This is with PM 2.5 particulate air quality levels at 277 which is considered Very Unhealthy but at the best level we saw all day and the sun was very faintly visible just above my neighbor's poplar tree:

You have to look hard to see the sun in this scene but it is just above and to the right of the center of the poplar tree. The image is pretty much straight out of my iPhone.

We started today out with an air quality rating of 367 which is rated as Dangerous. It felt almost like late twilight for most of the day.

 

[MonikaC]

Thanks, Alan. I was wondering how you are doing with fires/smoke so close.

 

[Ben Egbert]

Wow, this is insane, reminds me of the day St Helens went off.

 

[AlanLichty]

This was the best part of the day for having light - up until about noon it was downright dark with no trace of the sun at all. Nice time to be in the habit of wearing N95 masks. They helped a lot today.

 

[JimFox]

That’s pretty crazy Alan, though I know what you are going through as the sun disappears here from time to time. I had loaded my long lens into the car yesterday and was hoping for some cool shots of the sun towards sunset, but the sun just kind of slowly faded away about 45 mins before sunset so I couldn’t capture anything.

 

[AlanLichty]

That’s pretty crazy Alan, though I know what you are going through as the sun disappears here from time to time. I had loaded my long lens into the car yesterday and was hoping for some cool shots of the sun towards sunset, but the sun just kind of slowly faded away about 45 mins before sunset so I couldn’t capture anything.

There is almost no place you can go up here to shoot anything right now up here. The shot above is the only time we saw the sun at all yesterday and today we are back up to the Dangerous air quality level. It could be worse - there are a couple of places in Oregon that recorded PM2.5 levels that were far beyond classification with Florence topping the list at a reading of 975. PM2.5 levels at 301-500 is the worst classification (we are at 303 right now) so I can't even imagine trying to function with what happened in Florence.

I am prepping my RV to head over towards Astoria on Monday and it looks like rain will be moving in to break up the smoke. I have been wearing a mask while working outside.

 

[Jameel Hyder]

It looks just like this up here as well.

 

[AlanLichty]

For those of you out here on the left coast there are some web site maps that offer up some good info on local air quality. The top two so far for me are Air Now and Purple Air. As an example of the mapping Purple Air gives here is a screen shot showing the Portland/Vancouver area as of right now:

The monitor closest to me at the north end of Vancouver shows an AQ of 403 for PM2.5. Glad I don't live on the east side of Portland right now near Sandy.