It is unbearably smokey today. The winds picked up and it’s blowing out there pretty strongly. The Lolo fire, which is the one making things so fun to breathe around here, apparently flared back up and we are now in the smokiest air I have seen since the great fires of ’01. In short, it’s some really bad air out there. I’m hiding in my house with all the doors closed to try and mitigate the situation. My basement is the only place with relatively clean air since there’s no access to the outside down there.
There is virtually no vehicle traffic nor pedestrian traffic outside. Its like this place was neutron bombed or something.
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Reminder: Paratus is in about two weeks!
Its bad down in Colorado also!
I think you have to go to Houston to get out of the smoke.
Bad here in the highlands of Reno, NV. Combo of calif & local fires.
A cold front moved thru and we got smoke from Canadian fires all the friggin’ way down here in Madison, WI!
I wonder how those little portable room HEPA air filters would help inside houses during these smokey occurrences. Even if it cleans up the quality of air in one room one normally hangs out in.
As in a previous post I mentioned during wildfire season last year, I run HEPA house filters year round because my elderly mother has some sensitive lungs. HEPA for everyday use seems pretty good (whole house filters) and we tried those positive -ion air purifiers years back.
If you don’t have central heat/air with a single filter, I can see how a single room filter would help but in my experience nothing beats sealing all the windows and doors (except one door) with painters tape (duct tape in a longer time frame) and having only one door to access the outside, preferably with a second door behind it, sort of an airlock. This was the only way I could keep my mother breathing well (i.e. room air only, no O2) on the VERY heavy smoke days. Adding the single room filters, notice I had plural, will help this if you have a sensitive person.
Also note that as a particulate, smoke is pretty large on the filter scale, you can clog or use up some air filters pretty fast with heavy smoke. So don’t use your expensive gas mask filters, use cheap painters half face filters or N95s if you need to cover your face.
Advice from an EMT/FF, as always YMMV