How bad is the smog? (San Jose, San Francisco: buy, to live in, restaurants)

[radraja]

Okay, so I keep hearing that the smog in the South Bay area is "SO AWFUL!!!"

But looking at the actual statistics, Santa Clara County seems to be one of the cleanest in the state (and cleaner than most counties anywhere in the US, for that matter). California

So what's the deal? Does it just look worse than it actually is or something?

[krudmonk]

There are smoggy days, but don't buy the bull**** that it's worse in the south bay as opposed to other parts of the region. Quite often, as in LA, smog mixes with marine layer to create a broad haze. True smog is heavy and sits in the valley, so you can tell the difference when they occur.

[B_R]

Funny, I just saw something on a late night show last week that made fun of our air with a terrible photo, so it doesn't surprise me that's the impression people get of San Jose. I can say that condition is the exception. Most of the year we enjoy beautiful blue-sky sunshine the majority of the day, often after the marine inversion layer burns off. In most years we see NO rain between May and October and few showers in April, Oct, and Nov too. The number one reason people still say they love it here is the weather and I concur!

[krudmonk]

Yeah, that photo on The Colbert Report was unrecognizable. It looks like that was during a fire a or something.

[BayAreaHillbilly]

Smog has improved a lot since the 1970s, when there used to be Smog Alerts routinely. This is true for most of the traditionally urbanized parts of the state. Meanwhile, smog in places like the Central Valley has worsened, due to plain old growth.

[mysticaltyger]

Originally Posted by radraja

Okay, so I keep hearing that the smog in the South Bay area is "SO AWFUL!!!"

But looking at the actual statistics, Santa Clara County seems to be one of the cleanest in the state (and cleaner than most counties anywhere in the US, for that matter). California

So what's the deal? Does it just look worse than it actually is or something?

No, the smog is really not that bad here. We get a few bad days a year, at most. Not as clean as the air in San Francisco, but much cleaner than most places in SoCal or the Central Valley. The long term trend is that air pollution levels continue to drop and that seems likely to carry forward into the future here and everywhere else.

[hsw]

It's all relative

Even LA (Downtown and BevHills) is much less smoggy than in early '90s, let alone '80s or '70s

But relative to modern stds, Los Gatos and Orinda are about as bad as BevHills today

If one is accustomed to SF (ignore the smell of SF homeless or pet waste all over sidewalks) or Woodside air quality, LG air seems crappy, but it's all relative

Kind of akin to many who had an intense dislike for NYC in '90s when it allowed smoking inside bars/restaurants...or LV in its heyday (it's an irrelevant ghost town now)....the smells can be noxious and take yrs to cleanse out of indoors/outdoors/people's bodies

[mstnghu2]

If you search through the forums here, you'll find many posts saying San Jose is sooo hot (even though average summer time high temps are typically only in the high 70's-low 80's) and sooo smoggy (even though the air is much cleaner than numerous other areas in CA)- Give me a break. Often times the air appears dirtier than it really is, due to the marine layer not fully burning off. It's very rare to have a truly "smoggy" day in San Jose. Normally though, if there's any kind of extended period of high temperatures, the air can get pretty smoggy in the Santa Clara Valley. However, most days, you can easily see from one side of the valley to the other.

[BayAreaHillbilly]

To be fair, when there is a truly serious inversion and the sea breeze shuts down, the smog is about equally bad everywhere through out the entire smog basin (e.g. the entire inner bay).

If a slight offshore (aka Diablo / Santa Ana / whatever) wind comes on the heels of that, it can actually be worse at the beach than inland! Been there done that, I used to live in the Inner Sunset.

Of course as I mentioned, none of this compares with 35 years ago, when, ironically, we had 1/2 the population we now have in the overall Bay Area metro. Must have been some nasty, nasty emissions back in the day!

[sonarrat]

The air quality is bad in Milpitas, but that's because of the dump rather than smog. There is a visible haze most days though, if you look up towards the hills you can see it.