Don’t Breathe..

[dirtbag]

Apocalypse Now, NYC…Wednesday, 2:30 PM. June 7, 2023..

 

 

[jscott]

Welcome to my world.

(I’m in California).

Hey America, wanna do something about climate change now? 

Those fires aren’t going to be put out anytime soon. This is the new summer, aka ‘smoke season’. And of course, those fires are adding tons of CO2 into the atmosphere.

[Terran Terran]

You need a HMG face mask.

[Marcus]

The HMG masks make no statement about filtration efficiency at all, so they are nothing more than a sneeze guard.

If you are filtering smoke or micron or submicron sized particles N95 is the minimum filtration standard required. Surgical masks or the HMG “mask” will do nothing. Just want to point that out

[MJ H]

The bar I usually go to didn’t become non-smoking until 2020. So I’m prepared.

[David D]

https://www.ctvnews.ca/climate-and-environment/wildfire-smoke-from-canada-disrupts-new-york-philadelphia-flights-1.6431409

Our Air Quality Health Index was 10+ on a 10 pt scale today “very high risk” due to wildfires in Quebec.  Sun invisible or at best a tiny orange sliver.  All athletic and outdoor activities cancelled

Alberta and East Coast fires have been raging as well

It’s never been remotely this bad.  We locked the windows, and have been running the Hepa air filter full tilt for the last 2 days

[Bill Budney]

Yogi may be able to smell a pic-a-nic basket at a thousand paces, but I can smell CANADA from hundreds of miles away.

It must be scary there.

How do you douse an entire country full of forests?

[Terran Terran]

That’s what Colorado has been going through the last few years.. Smoke from California and Canada.

[David Thomas]

Welcome East Coast to my summer, one year out of five, when Interior Alaska around Fairbanks burns and we, 400 miles away, get a pervasive haze sometimes to the point that you can look directly at the midday sun.  I’ve never driven the Alcan through BC and YT without seeing huge forest fires burning without active fire fighting, sometimes for dozens of miles.

Other times (2014, 2019), 100,000s of acres in our area burn.  In additional to an occasional summer with no rain – something that never happened before – there’s tremendous amounts of standing dead timber from bark beetle killed spruce.  The warmer drier conditions favor the beetles so much relative to the spruce that outbreaks are now every 20 years instead of the historic 180-year cycle.

[AK Granola]

We began stirring up trouble tonight David, so get your mask ready! The wildfire in Fairbanks tonight was 1/2 mile from my house, roughly.  Fire fighters were on it fast, with 4 fire stations, helicopters and water bombers responding and hitting it hard. Forestry just sent in guys on foot to make sure it’s out so I think I can go to bed now. We’re in thick spruce forest, ready to flame hot and burn fast, with lots of fallen trees and limbs to ensure good kindling. And some wind to carry it along. Not sure what started this one, perhaps human caused. I guess we’ll find out in the next few days. And just after they had it out, we had a huge thunderstorm, plenty of lightning.

Just when they had that one out, the crew were picked up and hauled down to Birch Lake to hit another one. Here we go Alaska! Gotta keep up with the neighbors.

 

[David D]

Forest fire maps of Ontario and Quebec shows we’re doing our best to catch up to you folks.

There’s a fire ban in Algonquin Park, Killarney (La Cloche) and most of the province.  No alcohol stoves for you ULers: “Backcountry users must have a portable stove with a fuel shut-off valve”.  A number of Quebec parks are closed

Last time we had real rain was mid May (perfectly timed, I was hiking a tough section of Algonquin through it) but some rains are forecast for early next week, fingers crossed!

[bradmacmt]

It’s only “news” because it’s happening at the epicenter of the media, and New Yorker city residents are notorious whiners. Welcome to what we deal with all the time :)

[dirtbag]

Wow.. well I am far from a whiner and though I work in NYC, I live on Long Island..  so I know that comment was not intended at me.  Its News because this has never really happened here at this magnitude.. at least in my 48 years or recognition.. and if it has, well i dont remember and perhaps it wasn’t this bad?  If this was a normal condition, I think I would probably decide to move elsewhere.. not exactly pleasing when you cant even see a block and half away in front you.  Actually,  that I mention it, I would prefer to NOT live in NYC even if this NEVER happened..

[David Thomas]

When I was in Bejing, you couldn’t see more than 4 blocks, but that was due to industrial and vehicular pollution –  like LA of the 1970s.

[HkNewman]

There’s plenty of good natured memes telling NYC residents welcome to what the west has increasingly dealt with most summers (into fall sometimes).

The big question is whether ecological plant succession will take place after the burns or will new species displace the original ones?  British Columbia had its big burn in 2017 (just as I started hiking the PNW … ugh!), so not sure how their forest regrowth is going.

Also will we need to start to wear N-95 type masks to hike etc..?  If so may as well make them SPF if need be.  Also a little more sporty …

[David D]

We’re in a valley so are used to having forest fire smoke collect here (asthmatics flee this place) but this was off the charts well beyond anything I’ve seen in 35 yrs, and the fires aren’t proximate.

Last year’s forest fire rate was half the 10 year average, 2023 already exceeds the annual average.

Its already being politicized in our House of Commons, yeesh.

[jscott]

The fires that have been occurring over the last decade in California and Washington state and B.C. are not “typical”. Sure, there have always been fires and smoke in the west. But anyone older than fifty whose been living through the last years out west begins to understand things have changed. Dirtbag says he’s never seen anything like this in his life. Indeed! It hasn’t happened like this for centuries. Add it into what’s been happening out west in Canada for a decade, and you can’t help but reach the conclusion that we’re reaping the whirlwind of climate change. And this is just the beginning.

My brother lives in Spokane. I go visit him in September and we take a trip to our old haunts in Stehekin.  For years now, there’s been fires, hundred plus degree heat and smoke. We’ve been going there for sixty years. This is not typical. The last time we tried, we almost couldn’t make  it back from Chelan to Spokane. Too many fires! All the roads were blocked.

[bradmacmt]

Wow.. well I am far from a whiner and though I work in NYC, I live on Long Island.. so I know that comment was not intended at me.

DB, absolutely not intended for you, and the smiley face at the end of my post was there to indicate a bit of humor. I know it’s not normal for NY to have this sort of smoke, but that big low pressure system up over Northern Maine and the Maritime’s is giving NY its problem. The fact that this is the lead story on national news shows gives a lot of us a chuckle…

[dirtbag]

@Bradmacmt.. I knew it was a shot at humor,  lol.. that was just me being whiney!!

[HkNewman]

In all seriousness research is increasingly showing this amount of smoke is bad to breathe in, so break out the masks (N-95 if possible).

My own thoughts are if traveling (including backpacking trips) or able to remote work, then cheap/disposable or refundable tickets to where the smoke isn’t is preferable.   If not able to move away, well at least the smoke and mask means less sunscreen (silver lining!).

[AK Granola]

Alaska has always had wildfires, but they are definitely getting bigger and more frequent. They’re starting earlier and going later in the season, with rising temps and drying vegetation. And we’re having more lightning. The latest thing in my area are more and more trees falling onto power lines, which caused the most recent fire in my neighborhood. We also have many frequent power outages because of these trees, all year long. The trees aren’t new, and neither are the power lines. What’s new is heavy winter snowfall bending the trees, and ice lenses under the ground melting in summer and uprooting them. As a result, trees that have been here hundreds of years are falling over and dying.  Around my house we have probably lost 100 trees in the last 2 years alone. Now we don’t even know what we can plant in their place, until we know how much the ground is going to settle. Do we go with species that are natural here or is it better to put in ornamentals? I like to keep the woods around me natural, to support wildlife. But can our soils sustain those species?

Attached are a couple of photos showing the big old tree we just had to cut. It was a large healthy white spruce, but the melting permafrost couldn’t hold onto the roots. Really sad to see those large old trees go!

Walking up my road, I can see thermokarsts everywhere, all exposed in the last few years; they weren’t there even a decade ago. The pace of change is rapidly accelerated and there is honestly probably nothing we can do at a local level to slow it down, much less stop it.

It’s scary and sad. My only solution is to make the most of every good moment, see and do as much as I can do. Until governments – especially ours – decide to take useful action, I don’t have a lot of hope. 

[dirtbag]

Nuts. Yes sad and disturbing.  Not to stir the pot here, but i do believe we are in the midst of another mass extinction. Probably, hopefully will not end in our time.. but it is in process.. and not much any government or world order can do to stop it. Maybe slow its progress? Not prevent.  The earth, atmosphere.. entire galaxy can do things Probably that are unimaginable to any know human, and can happen at any time.. slowly or in a flash.

[David Thomas]

There are lots of extinction mechanisms all going on at once.  Plants that now should be 1000 miles further north for an appropriate climate.  Plants and animals that are already in a climatic island but will run of habit because they can’t go upslope enough.  Human infrastructure disrupting the continuity of “green infrastructure” of unbroken streams and forests.  Human-transported invasive species that have no nature predators.

[Jerry Adams]

Its interesting that people from Alaska see more effect.  Perma frost melting and trees falling over.  As predicted by climate scientists about global warming – more global warming effects in norther latitudes

Here in Portland I don’t see anything clearly linked to global warming. There seem to be more forest fires but scientists claim thats only possibly linked to global warming.  Forest management (e.g. putting out fires) may be more of a cause.

A couple years ago it was 116 F.  They said that may have been worse because of global warming.

[Steve S]

Jerry,

There are snowfall records for Portland from the late 1800s. Each decade has had less total snowfall than the previous. Every 10 years “normal” has been redefined by the National Weather Service.

Remember the 1970s? The glaciers have receded, making Mt. Hood blacker by late summer with more pumice showing, and looking more angular with previously buried edges now exposed. Compare an old photo of the north side with a new one.

Start at timberline on some ridge (one that has not been burned) with a trail leading down to your car. Instead of staying on the trail when it leaves the ridge top, descend along the ridge top. Note where you first have to go over deadfall. Estimate the age of the trees at that elevation, because timberline was at that elevation when those trees began to grow. When I did the experiment on the north side of Diamond Peak, I estimated that timberline had risen 1000′, and that the trees were 40 years old (but I’m not an expert on estimating tree age).

Each is a sign of global warming — as forecast in 1896 by Svante Arrhenius — near Portland.

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