I am considering heading to the Southern Winds in a few days, but my biggest concern is the level of smoke/haze (I have much higher tolerance for mosquitoes than for bad air quality!). If anyone has been there recently (like in the last week or so), how smoky/hazy was it? Or if anyone has any tips for gauging/predicting the air quality, please let me know!
Topic
Current smoke/haze conditions in the Winds?
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- This topic has 6 replies, 5 voices, and was last updated 1 year, 9 months ago by .
Purple Air is my main source of current air quality information:
https://map.purpleair.com/1/mAQI/a10/p604800/cC0#7.75/43.077/-109.652
What anyone experienced in the past week is not necessarily what you will experience…. even what it looks like today may not be what it looks like tomorrow…. yes… purple air .com is a great source of current smoke conditions…. but it can change hourly, depending on the wind. Another source is the Wyoming DOT has web cams which so some local views… Google it… Personally, I avoid exercising in any AQI over 50… while that may be rated as some version of ‘ok’… remember, those ratings are for the average sedentary person… not people engaged in heavy exercise and taking in vastly larger amounts of air, and therefore more pollutants, over multiple 24/7 days of a backpack.
If you really want to avoid smoke, look at the large view on Purple Air .com… and avoid the regions where there is smoke. Go to where there are large areas of Green Dots… The coastal areas are fairly dependable to be smoke free.
Thanks; I didn’t know about that Purple Air site
Couple of others to play with, including smoke plume forecast FWIW:
My friend working at Yellowstone wrote me yesterday, saying her throat was raw from smoke, as we’re a number of co-workers. I have asthma so breathing fire smoke is not for me.
Purple Air sounds like a great website for tracking air quality . I use Caltopo for tracking wild fires as it’s updated daily and at times, several times a day. However, the AirNow app gives good detailed info and is a great addition.
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