Discussion: Unpleasant

Must be very unpleasant in your part of the world at the moment. Lots of parallels with our experience last summer, although Melbourne was far enough away from the fires that we only had air quality at those levels for a couple of days; Canberra had it on and off for weeks.

Looks like a significant shift in the pattern from Monday?

Really hoping soon! And we should be on the brink of fall rains, really hoping the possible showers Tue morning materialize and start it off!!

I was thinking of you when I heard Portland had the worst air quality of any major city in the world! Rain Tuesday sounds promising. I don't know when we'll get any rain here. It's been smokey here but not quite 200 AQI bad. What a year :(

Now at 426 AQI, which seems to be pushing the limit of our air purifier, so hope it doesn't get too much worse! Yeah, this year is just something else!

And I see that we've exported to you some of the more out-there ideas on how the fires got started, although I'd say that the US still has a substantial trade surplus in conspiracy theories (most recently we've got ourselves a local incarnation of Pizzagate).

Hah, yeah. The Oregon state fire marshal was just put on admin leave because he publicly shared the antifa theory... Woke up to 514 AQI.

Oh wow to all of that.

Yikes at all of the above. I hope your air quality and prevailing local social views improve quickly.

This wildfire smoke forecast product developed for Canada will be useful for Portland as well I think.

https://firesmoke.ca/forecasts/current/

That's pointing to some level of easing in Portland from now, and a much more substantial improvement from Monday evening (or '03Z' in our parlance - weather models run in UTC/Greenwich Mean Time, so that translates as 8pm Pacific time). That's consistent with other forecasts I've seen.

Awesome, really looking forward to the improvement! Still at 496 at our nearest station this morning.

And I was wrong on the reason the OR fire marshal was put on admin leave. A deputy in Clackamas county was put on admin leave for broadcasting the antifa consipracy theory. The fire marshal was put on leave for improperly entering a high-risk fire zone without proper permission (looking for the potential remains of an employee's family member).