Calm Winter Weather Causing Air Pollution Issues In Vermont

The lovely city of Rutland, Vermont is in a bowl-shaped valley,
which makes it prone to inversion-caused air pollution problems
in the winter. Other Vermont valleys are similary at risk.

It's a very calm week, weather wise in Vermont. Most of us, including me, enjoy this.

Temperatures are moderate, there's no precipitation, and you want to get outside. It's really perfect winter weather.

Or is it?

When it's this calm, inversions often set up in the winter. That's when there's a warmer layer of air aloft which acts as a lid. That keeps pollutants from blowing away. Instead, soot, particulates or whatever accumulate in the air, especially in valleys.

This usually isn't such a problem in the summer. At that time of year, the sun is strong. The sunshine blasts onto the surface of the Earth, including in Vermont valleys. That leads to updrafts, which basically mixes the air, breaks up inversions and dilutes pollution. A lot of that pollution gets caught up in winds aloft, and blows away. Good riddance.

In the winter, the sun is much weaker. There's no blasting of heat to cause updrafts. So the warm air stays in place aloft.  And down in our Vermont valleys our wood stoves, our pellet stoves, our cars and whatever else belches into the air. And it has nowhere to go.

Which is why the National Weather Service in Burlington, Vermont has issued an air quality alert for Rutland County until 11 p.m. Friday.

The area around Rutland is notorious for this in the winter. Rutland City, and surrounding towns, are essentially at the bottom of a bowl, surrounded by mountains. So, when there's an inversion, exhaust from all our stuff goes into the air, that pollution just sits there, which everyone around Rutland gets to breathe.

Oh joy!

This pollution is mainly in the form of particulates. These particulates are usually tiny bits of soot. When we breathe that soot, the particulates go into the tiniest passages of our lungs, where they can get stuck.

The level of pollution in valleys like those in Rutland County probably won't majorly hurt young whippersnappers and generally healthy people.  By the way, this problem isn't limited to Rutland County through Friday.

As the National Weather Service notes, other populated Vermont valleys, like in the Barre-Montpelier area, parts of the Connecticut River valley and other areas of Vermont surrounded by mountains, the air isn't going to be so great through Friday

But for people who have health problems, especially those with lung disease, have cardiopulmonary problems or are elderly should stay indoors. For instance, my mother, age 90, has COPD and lives in West Rutland. She needs to stay indoors until this problem goes away.

This problem will go away on Saturday. Some storminess is coming in, which would tend to increase winds and disperse the particulate pollution.

Vermont has a pretty well deserved reputation as being environmentally friendly. But we're far from perfect, and we are completely capable of sinking into air pollution problems.