It’s been a very smoky week, with the air quality staying in the unhealthy range for much of the past few days.
There are numerous fires in California, some bigger than others. With any kind of westerly wind, smoke will continue to move into western Nevada.
Reno, Carson City, Tahoe, Sparks, the list goes on for impacted areas. Smoke forecasts can be very challenging, but models have come a long ways over the years.
The biggest question mark is what the fires in California will do. If the fires weaken, of course the smoke would go down too. It has been a significant week for poor air quality. Even breaking a record in Reno on Wednesday.
The air quality in Reno is measured at several different locations. The air quality index for Reno is an average of all those points combined. The PM2.5 is the measurement most affected by smoke.
Reno reached the very unhealthy range with a count of 292 for PM2.5 particulates early Wednesday afternoon. This was enough to break the all time record for a one hour time frame in Reno.
The data is not quite as impressive for a 24 hour time period, but is still significant. August 19th, 2020 goes down in history as the 6th worst air quality day ever seen in Reno. 2008 is the worst on record with a value of 182. It was 156 August 19th, 2020. The last time it was this smoky within a 24 hour period was back in 2013 from the Rim Fire.
Our air quality peaked early Wednesday afternoon with particulate levels still staying in the unhealthy range for much of the day. Thursday was very similar, with some improvement in the late afternoon. Friday was unhealthy as well, with not as much of an improvement after sunset. In the timeline below purple means very unhealthy, red means unhealthy, and orange means unhealthy for sensitive groups. Yellow means moderate. The graph below is for the monitoring site in downtown Reno. Not the average of all the stations combined.
Heading into the weekend, it will still be smoky. Saturday will be worse than Sunday. The air quality will be in the unhealthy range Saturday, and unhealthy for sensitive groups Sunday.
Wind direction is key when it comes to smoke. Right now there are numerous fires in central and northern California. Which means any kind of west wind will keep us rather smoky. However, the wind direction will be more southerly on Sunday. This could help our cause. We could also see some rain Monday, this would help too. Thunderstorms can either help us or hurt us. They tend to produce outflow winds, which can spread out in a variety of directions. Fingers crossed the smoke goes away and we don’t have any additional fires from thunderstorms.
While we are not a fan of fires and smoke, they do produce some awesome sunsets. Have a great weekend.
