Bootleg AQI

We had weird weather here today, the sky a dirty yellowish white, the buildings on the horizon a soupy grey and  and the sun a fuzzy orange. The light reminded me of Shanghai so I checked the AQI index and saw we were in unhealthy territory. By evening it reached 167.

But where could all that fine particulate matter be coming from? Eventually we learned the reason. We'd read that the Oregon Bootleg fire was generating its own weather, smoke in a satellite view streaming eastward... should have remembered it could reach us! 

Smoke gets in your eyes

Smoke from distant fires has found us again, this time from Quebec.

Somewhere in NYC we apparently breached dangerous AQI 400 today, this in a city whose record before yesterday's 174 was 167 (in 2002).

AQI maps are colorful; from within it justs looks yellowish brown.

Top dramatic image from the iPhone's Weather app at 5pm (my no longer go-to AccuWeather was unerreporting AQIs by a factor of two!); bottom from AirNow.gov at 8pm. Our nearest sensor was unaccountably disabled all afternoon. NY's not used to this!

Release

Stayed indoors yesterday as the harzardous levels of AQI slowly subsided. 

By this morning, it was safe to go out, savoring the crisp air and the shapely clouds in the blue sky. 

But of course the fires in Canada haven't gone out, and it's still early in the fire season...

青岛

Greetings from Qingdao, where it feels like dusk all the time! The picture of the sun setting over the Lutheran Church (this was a German colony for a brief spell) was taken at sunset, but air - AQI over 300! - was soupy brown all day. Laoshan might be more refreshing tomorrow; if not, there's always beer: Tsingtao is made here.