Clean air!

[Teacher Terry]

The smoke moved into Reno last night and our air quality has been around 160 ever since. Because I have asthma I am staying inside. This has been our best summer in a long time in regard to fires.

[shelato]

All things considered the air was pretty good today. On purple air it is below 50 in most of the region with lots of scores in the teens, twenties and thirthies. I got out for a bike ride, it was nice.

Originally Posted by Valley Boy

Told you, you jinxed it.

I probably did jinx it, but the air is good today.

Originally Posted by Wellwouldyoulookatthat

I'm contemplating a move to Sacramento and I do worry about this. I dont want to be in a city that has poor air quality on a semi-regular basis due to fires and smoke. Sigh

The smoke from the wildfires is a relatively new problem, we have had some issues this year, but things were much worse last year and the year before. Part of the problem is the drought and climate change, part of the problem is long term forest mismanagement catching up with us. The fires in the past two years though did actually get rid of a bunch of the overgrowth in the forest. Not the ideal way to manage the problem, but I think the previous two really bad fire seasons are part of the reason why year three of the drought isn't as bad this year, the past two fire seasons burned up a lot of the fuel.

Originally Posted by mixxalot

Southern states like Georgia and Florida have controlled burns to prevent wildfires. California is way behind the times.

The fires are now a big enough political problem where I think the momentum toward allowing more controlled burns over the objections of nimbys is more likely to happen. Yes water is wet and California is mismanaged. The rural areas don't have any clout because they lean right, so ideas like managing the forests better with more logging and controlled burns weren't getting much traction with the greenies. But I think the fires and the smoke are rearranging the political landscape. The progressives want more renewable energy and that is going to require a lot more transmission lines through fire prone regions, so something has to give.

[shelato]

It has been windy for the past several days, but containment on the Mosquito fire is now at the time I am writing this up to 20%, that is double from 10% containment since September 11th when I last checked. So I am pleased about that.

The air is not as quite as good today as yesterday, but the air is still not that bad. More readings in the high forties and low fifties on purple air with some areas near Roseville and Rocklin in the mid twenties. So I will say so far the air has held up much better in Sacramento this fire season vs the last two.

[shelato]

As of about an hour ago, Calfire said the Mosquito fire is now 39% contained. So the rain is doing its magic and we should still have some rain in the area later on.

[shelato]

They just released the operational update for the Mosquito Fire, it looks like they think official containment is going to grow rapidly in the next several days.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVDslcurw3Y

[Valley Boy]

How is that thing even still going after all that rain?!

[shelato]

I was curious about that myself but I heard a guy on one of the Calfire videos talk about this. The rain gets the grass and brush wet and that puts out the fire on those surfaces. But fire can burn inside a tree and even into the root system and these are spaces where rain doesn't always get into these spots, so the fire can keep burning in these spaces even during the rain. These also become spaces where the fire can then re-establish itself later when area starts to dry out again.

The other thing that I though was interesting is that containment of a fire doesn't mean that the fire is out. Containment just means that they have built a perimeter around the fire that they don't think the fire can jump. At the time I am writing this post, containment currently is 49%. Containment is proceeding pretty rapidly right now because buildings aren't actively being threatened, so they can devote more resources to just building out the containment lines. The other thing though that can make containment tough to achieve is that some of these containment lines need to go down steep hills to get at the various forks of the American River or other streams and rivers that feed into the American River, so the terrain is just pretty difficult. It also isn't enough to clear the forest floor, you need to make sure the fire can't jump from the crown of one tree to another tree and doing this on pretty steep hills in the back country is tough work.

https://www.fire.ca.gov/incidents/20...mosquito-fire/

[shelato]

The good news is that they lifted the evacuation orders for of the people affected by the fire. I was hoping the rain would put an end to the smoke in Sacramento, but it's back. Containment might be up to 60% as of this morning, but the fire still isn't out and the breeze is pushing the smoke toward us today.

[Damnitjanet]

The smoke from the fire seems to be done. Amen!

[shelato]

The Mosquito Fire is now 85% contained. The fire has been handed off from Cal Fire to the National Forest Service. They are now removing excess equipment off this fire. They believe that there is a minimal chance this fire will get beyond their containment lines and now its mostly a mop up operation.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWM-Gh0BgJI

So I am thinking we have likely seen the worse of the fire season this year.