Weather Forecast: Smoky
The smoke from a thousand wild fires has settled into a large portion of Northern California and has now become a weather system. It’s been the weather for a few days now and the forecast for tomorrow is…. smoky. The air quality has gone beyond the health warnings for the elderly and those with respiratory problems. Things are more along the lines of “We’re all screwed, stay in your house, close your windows, close your doors and turn on your air conditioners”.
There’s a big red ball up in the sky that’s the closest thing we’ve seen to the sun for the last three days. The lower the red ball sinks in the sky, the more it disappears into the dense lower layer of smoke and darkness is coming a little earlier while we are supposed to be at the peak of daylight hours. It’s kind of eerie, but mostly, it’s kind of uncomfortable. Like a slow suffocation.
Here’s to the fires quick demise and a return to sunnier skies. In a way I’m jealous because your frightening air quality is only temporary. Down here in the southern side things are certainly better, but many was the back-to-back-to-back-to-back smoggy days as a full-tilt kid playing under similar suns that you could stare at bare-eyed and not blink it was so dimmed. And deep breathes weren’t possible without pain and a hacking cough.
Thanks Will. Yes, knowing its just a temporary discomfort makes a lot of difference. People had their headlights on at 3 o’clock this afternoon. It’s just strange out there.
I had an experience with L.A. smog back in 1979. I had just moved there and my roommate was from New York, so neither one of us knew the area. It was summer and at the peak of bad air. When the fall came, I woke up one morning, looked out the window and had to go and wake my roommate, telling her “we have mountains”. She thought I had gone mad, but there they were - and snow capped too!. We just stared at the mountains that had magically appeared overnight and then we grasped just how bad the smog had been that summer.