Warning: Smoky Bay Area skies may be ‘pretty nasty for extended period’
Smoke from a series of wildfires that were still raging out of control throughout the region turned the Bay Area into the equivalent of a giant smoke-filled dome Wednesday, canceling college classes, making people ill and bringing warnings from air officials not to go outside.
It also made the Bay Area’s air the dirtiest in the world early in the afternoon as ash from dozens of lightning-caused fires covered cars, houses and yards.
“You look out the window,” said Dileepa Zarate, a teacher who lives in Milpitas, “and it’s just a gray mist.”
“It was like snow,” San Jose resident Julie Moblad said of her arrival
to work at her Los Gatos office, where the parking lot was covered in white ash.
And the conditions won’t change for a while. The Bay Area Air Quality Management District extended the Spare the Air advisory through Sunday, even though the hot temperatures are supposed to wane a bit in the coming days.
“Just from the sheer number of massive fires that we have going right now,” National Weather Service meteorologist Drew Peterson said, “it’s going to be pretty nasty for an extended period of time, unfortunately.”
Purple Air, a company that monitors air quality globally through sensors stationed around the world, reported at noon an unofficial air quality index of 417 at Casa Loma McKean, just outside Morgan Hill. The number reflects the 10-minute average of particulates in the air, and anything over 400 indicates a health warning of emergency conditions if people are exposed to it over 24 hours.
The index also soared over 400 near Donner Lake earlier Wednesday morning and was over 300 throughout different spots in the region. By comparison, at the same time a measurement of 165 in the South American nation of Argentina was the highest anywhere else in the world, according to Purple Air.
“This is definitely the worst we’ve experienced this year, and possibly the worst since the Camp Fire in 2018,” said Erin DeMeritt, a spokeswoman for the air quality management district. “We also had the Kincade Fire (in Sonoma County) last year. But even that one wasn’t like this, just because there are so many of them and such limited resources to fight them.”
Purple Air recorded measurements of over 500 during the Camp Fire in Paradise, a level that a UC Berkeley study said was akin to smoking a pack of cigarettes a day.
The district, which also produces official air quality measurements for the region, said the Knox Avenue area of San Jose had a measurement of 193 at noon; anything over 200 is considered very unhealthy for any able-bodied person to be in for a lengthy period of time.
“When I got here at 7:15 a.m. and rolled my window down to get into the garage, I was surprised at the smoke smell,” said Concord resident Mary Schad, who works at the Kaiser building in Oakland. “We could also smell the smoke inside the building on the (22nd) floor.”
Zarate said she was teaching online classes inside her home when she felt ill with a headache after stepping outside to walk her dog.
“It smells as if there’s a bonfire going,” she said.
In Gilroy, the particulate matter read 187, and elsewhere in San Jose it was 184. The air also was considered unhealthy in Pleasanton (176), East Oakland (159) and Livermore (158).
Any readings from 151200 are considered unhealthy for everybody, according to the air quality management district.
All of it caused Moblad’s eyes to tear up.
“Blazing heat, we lost power, and now these fires,” Moblad said. “It’s too much.”
The smoke only made the sizzling hot temperatures in the far inland areas of the region that much more stifling. By noon, it was 99 degrees in Pittsburg, 98 in Concord and 97 in Livermore and forecasters said those temps were likely to go over 100 degrees.
The first seeds of a break from that hot spell did start to creep in closer to the coast, National Weather Service meteorologist Roger Gass said, thanks to the return of the usual onshore breeze that had been pushed aside by a highpressure bubble from the south that brought on the heat.
At San Jose International Airport, it was 85 degrees at noon, a dip of 6 degrees from the same time the previous day, Gass said. In Oakland, it was 79 degrees. In the Santa Cruz Mountains, Gass said, temperatures stayed in the 60s in the lower elevations and topped out around 90 in the mountains
“There’s just so much smoke, it’s actually held the temperatures down a little bit,” Gass said.
The smoke is a result of the SCU Lightning Complex fires in Santa Clara, Alameda, Contra Costa, San Joaquin and Stanislaus counties; the LNU Lightning Complex fires in Lake, Napa, Solano, Sonoma and Yolo counties; and the CZU
Lightning Complex fires in Santa Cruz and San Mateo counties.
A heavy layer of smoke was expected to hover about 2,000 feet above the surface throughout Friday, Peterson said. Wood burning is banned during the Spare the Air alert, and air quality officials encouraged people to stay indoors and to close their windows if possible. Those with respiratory issues should be extra careful.
“The long-story-short of it is that people should prepare for a long duration of unhealthy air,” Peterson said. “It’s going to overcast, but it will be overcast smoke. It may be raining ash, too.”
Staff writers Daniel Wu and Alejandra Armstrong contributed to this report.