Wildfire smoke is a weird thing. I’m sitting on my patio, watching the sun set. It’s very obvious the smoke is up there because of the color of the setting sun. Intense pinkish-orange (and blinding, why am I looking at it directly?!?).
And then there is this, the smoke plume map of my general area in the US Midwest:
Not only is the wildfire smoke up there, it’s pretty heavy. There is a milkiness to the rest of the sky. Down here though? On land? Nothing. Green and yellow dots everywhere. Good to great air quality. Green here where I’m sitting. And a beautiful evening to boot! Low 70s (Fahrenheit), low humidity1. Wonderful weather to be sitting outside.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not complaining. I had enough of the ground level smoke a couple weeks back when we hit 900 on the air quality reading (for reference it’s 43 as I write this). It’s just odd to me, and another wild thing about nature to think about. But oh those smoke-assisted sunsets!
- “Humidity” as a percentage is useless. The dew point is a much better indicator of atmospheric water content. Right now it’s in the high-50s here. Very comfortable!