PM2.5 concentrations at Hawthorne Elementary have been in the moderate to unhealthy for sensitive groups categories for about 48 hours, and in the moderate category at times for several day before that.
This is one of the worst stretches of smoke that I can remember and I've developed a persistent cough in the last couple of days.
Dry, clean, cool air is desperately needed!
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ReplyDeleteUnrelated comment...it looks like this winter could feature a moderate El Niño and -PDO. The last time this occurred was in the 94-95 Winter. How would one go about examining that Winter to see if/how these factors contributed to the high snowfall totals in UT? I realize that generally speaking ENSO state doesn’t have too much impact on UT winters, that many other factors contribute to snowfall totals, and that predictions based on one previous, potentially similar Winter would be foolish. Still, the relative rarity of -PDO/moderate El Niño has be interested.
ReplyDeleteI don't put too much stock in seasonal predictions for Utah, especially those that narrow things down to the sign of a couple of indicies. The correlations aren't very strong for our part of the world and we have too short of a record for robust statistics. The climate prediction center outlooks for Nov-Dec-Jan, Dec-Jan-Feb, Jan-Feb-Mar, and Feb-Mar-Apr show "equal chances (see http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/predictions/multi_season/13_seasonal_outlooks/color/p.gif), which basically means that there's no loading of the dice for above average, average, or below average in northern Utah for those periods.
DeleteSomebody out there will get the seasonal forecast for this area right, but that's just good fortune, sort of like a blind squirrel finding a nut.
Jim
Our household is curious about the air quality in regards to the upcoming Tour of Utah - does anyone know if there is an AQI threshold at which they might limit or cancel race stages?
ReplyDeleteAre you familiar with any GIS/mapping work thats been done to create visualizations of areas across the continent (or the globe, I suppose) that have burned over the past, let's say, 30 years? The pessiment in me assumes that we will reach a point where virtually all of our forests and grasslands in the arid portion of the USA have burned recently, leaving us in a sort of post-apocalypse with some green grass here and there, and it would be interesting (and possibly relieving) to see the progression of actual areal coverage of fires in the recent past.
ReplyDeleteCalTopo.com/ has an overlay for fires (2000-2018).
ReplyDeleteSelect MapBuilder Topo and Fire History.
thanks, thats really cool!
DeleteOkay, this might be a total coincidence, but I have to ask:
ReplyDeleteWe live in Tollgate and we bounce our internet off of our neighbors house (with their permission), and over the past two days we've been having connectivity problems during the hotter times of day (3-5pm), which you mentioned a few posts ago can coincide with the worst air quality during summer days. Utah Broadband confirmed that the radio device we use was having issues when I called them yesterday. Additionally, when the temperature starts to cool in the evening, the internet magically starts working again.
I know there are a lot of variables in my case, but is it possible for high concentrations of particulate matter to interfere with radio signals?
It is unlikely that the particulates are causing enough scattering to impact your signal strength. (Scattering is frequency dependent, that is why our sky is blue and sunsets are red, but radio frequencies are low compared to light and pass through dust easily. This is why astronomers use radio telescopes, to "see" through dust.)
DeleteFar more likely is a problem with the heat and thermal expansion. My guess is that there is a loose connection in the wiring. Either a screw-on connector is not fully tight or a solder joint is cracked. As things heat up and expand the connection (or solder joint) opens up and you lose your feed. When it cools back down the connection reconnects and you get your Internet back.
The low hanging fruit here are all the connectors on the roof and in the system. A couple pairs of pliers gently, but firmly, tightening every connection is where I would suggest that you start.
(John Sohl, WSU Physics Professor)
Jim,
ReplyDeleteWhen do you foresee us getting any break from the smoke? My wife is pregnant and I know this cant be good for her.