Hazy California deals with smoky smell from distant blaze
SACRAMENTO, CALIF. — For two weeks a dull haze and the faint smell of smoke from distant blazes have blanketed many California cities, forcing summer campers to stay inside, obscuring normally bright skylines and leaving cars covered with ash.
Smoky air from blowing winds is nothing new in California, but air quality experts say it’s rare for the dirty air to linger for so long, a reality of ever-larger fires that take longer to extinguish.
The haze stretches from the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountain range to the Sacramento and San Francisco Bay areas, and nearly every major population centre in between has suffered air quality that’s considered dangerous for children, the elderly and people with asthma or other respiratory conditions.
There are two major wildfires — one called the Mendocino Complex Fire that is the largest in California history — burning more than 100 miles (160 kilometres) north of Sacramento and another huge fire near Yosemite National Park, a little farther to the southeast. Firefighters made significant progress against the Mendocino Complex for the first time Wednesday but said the blazes will likely continue through September.
The fires have combined to produce unhealthy air that has drifted as far east as Salt Lake City, 450 miles (725 kilometres) away. The skies there were so murky that, earlier this week, residents couldn’t even see the nearby mountain range that hovers over the valley. Utah air quality officials warned children and seniors to limit time outside.
The skies cleared a bit on Wednesday in Utah’s capital city, but more smoke is expected to blow in over the weekend, National Weather Service meteorologist Steve Rogowski said.
Wednesday marked the Sacramento region’s 13th straight “Spare the Air” day, when people are encouraged not to drive and add further pollutants to the air — the longest stretch since at least 2001. A similar warning is in effect in the San Francisco Bay Area, and air quality experts in California’s Central Valley and areas southeast of Los Angeles are warning residents to limit outdoor exposure because of wildfires there.
On Wednesday morning, John and Rosalie Gonzales strolled through a Sacramento park with their toddler granddaughter. For the last few days, at their home in the San Francisco Bay Area community of Albany, they have awakened to ash on their cars from the Mendocino Complex Fire. That was a rarity until a few years ago, when California began experiencing more unusually large wildfires, they said.
A day earlier, dozens of summer campers sat inside watching a movie at a Sacramento YMCA.
“Normally, that doesn’t happen on a regular day at camp,” said Jay Lowden, president of the YMCA for a nine-county region that serves more than 700 kids weekly at 13 summer camps. His counsellors monitor the air quality on a daily basis, and Lowden said he may cancel a planned family camp this weekend in the foothills because of the smoke.
Sacramento residents have taken to Twitter to share photos of a dark grey sky hanging over the Capitol in mid-afternoon and a city skyline difficult to make out.
“It was horrible; I’ve never seen anything like it before,” Mayor Darrell Steinberg said of Monday’s afternoon haze.
Lori Kobza, spokesperson for the Sacramento Air Quality Management District, said it’s hard to predict when things will improve because of the unpredictably of the fires and the winds.
Because the city is located in a valley, it’s easier for smoky air to get trapped here when high pressure systems blow in, making Sacramento like a smokefilled bowl that’s had a lid placed tightly on top.
“We’re all trapped in it,” Kobza said.