Soaking in the worst air quality in the world

kersploosh@sh.itjust.works to Mildly Infuriating@lemmy.world – 447 points –

The Air Quality Index in my town is currently 260 (very unhealthy) due to a surge in wildfires in western Canada and the northwest US. There are additional smaller fires not shown on this map at this zoom level.

From the interactive map it looks like the worst air in the world right now.

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Hello from Spokane, where we were literally off the chart yesterday! (AQI of 511 out of 500!) I went outside for five minutes to water the garden and my eyes were stinging and teary for a while afterwards.

But nobody gives a shit unless it's the east coast, because this has happened nearly every year for the past 5 years. At least I can see the sky today.

Yeah honestly as someone who lived through a lot of smoke in the PNW, I was in a weird way kinda glad the east coast was getting a solid piece of it earlier this year. More people need to know what the fuck going on and they're way too frequently spared from it over there.

When it's bad it's like apocalyptic bad, people don't understand.

a few years ago when Portland had all those fires, I walked out of work and the sky was literally RED. It looked like a fucking bomb got dropped here with all the smoke in the air.

Yeah I remember one year where it was so bad in Seattle you couldn't see across Elliott Bay in Seattle to view either Bainbridge Island or West Seattle. When a ferry or water taxi would get even like 1/3 of the way across the water it disappeared into white space. The sun was blood red for 2 weeks. Just insanely creepy.

Ok well let me provide some contrast please.

I live in north Seattle area, but I'm originally from upstate NY. I went back yo NY this year for family, when things there were unusually smokey for once.

IT WAS WAY WORSE THAT IVE EVER SEEN IT IN NORTH SEATTLE, EVEN THOUGH THE AQI FIGURED WERE LOWER. Add to that, people don't know the most basic things about coping woth smoke there, like making box fan + furnace filters.

So yeah they complained a lot because it was truly very very bad. I sincerely hope we don't have to deal with that becuase in the 12 years I've been in PNW, it's NEVER been close to as bad as NY earlier this year.