Vermont Air: A Hazy Shade Of Winter Indeed

Hazy shade of winter indeed. A temperature inversion gave us this
murky view of St. Albans, Vermont Saturday. The bluish
greyish tint to the fog suggests some pollution mixed in. 

Saturday in Vermont, the atmosphere had an interesting look to it.  It wasn't necessarily a healthy look, either.

It was murky and foggy, but the fog had a blue and gray slate colored tint to it. It's as if somebody added a bit of steel blue food coloring to the atmosphere. The atmosphere totally had me humming   that old song, "Hazy Shade of Winter," that old Simon and Garfunkle song released in 1966. You might remember it as the 1980s version by the Bangles.

Anyway, the hazy, foggy air was a sign there has been a bit of air pollution in this weekend's murk.

By this morning, air quality in the Champlain Valley had become unhealthy for sensitive groups, according to data from the Vermont Department of Enviromental Conservation. That means people like the elderly, patients with heart and lung problems, and that type of thing should probably avoid prolonged or heavy exertion outdoors.  

This relatively bad air also covered a large portion of Quebec, including the Montreal metro area as of Sunday morning.

Elsewhere, through most of Vermont, western and southern New England and New York, the air quality was "moderate."  That means it's not necessarily unhealthy, but it's not super great, either. The situation has not gotten bad enough for anyone to issue any air quality alerts.

The wind has been pretty calm over the past few days, which is uncharacteristically of winter, Under these conditions, inversions find it easy to form, and that's what we've had on our hands for the past few days.

A regional air quality map from Sunday morning. Orange shading is
air that's unhealthy for senstive people. Yellow is not hazardous, really,
but there is some pollution in the air. . 

Inversions are when there's a layer of warmer air above the surface, with somewhat chillier air near the ground.  That layer acts as a lid, trapping clouds, moisture and pollution near the surface. We've had this type of weather pattern in Vermont often this winter.  More so than usual.

The inversion began when the air was more clear late last week.  Now, it's dank and cloudy and foggy and hazy.  Occasionally, the sun might poke through, but it will remain hazy.

Most of this stuff in the atmosphere is just harmless moisture trapped under the inversion. But as noted, there's a bit of pollution mixed in, mostly particulates. These are teeny, tiny particles and bits come from the exhaust of cars, trucks, wood and pellet stoves and whatever else people are burning out there.

Under extreme conditions, these wintertime inversions can get very dangerous in terms of pollution, though I want to very strongly emphasize this sort of meh air over Vermont now is not and will NOT become especially dangerous.

But there have been instances, especially in the days before the 1963 federal Clean Air Act when air pollution was far worse.

For instance, in the autumn of 1948, an inversion formed over Donora, Pennsylvania.  Emissions from a huge steel mill in the area causd a choking smog in Donora that killed 19 people and sickened hundreds, if not thousands.

Luckily, there's no threat of that happening.  See, environmental laws DO make a difference!

It looks as if it will remain murky in and around Vermont through Monday, and maybe into Tuesday.  I don't think the relatively limited amount of pollution will get worse, as the air is at least stirring some, and bouts of light precipitation falling through this air gunk can help.

By Wednesday, the wind will pick up a bit, and the air coming into northern New England will have originated from the rather pristine environment around James Bay, Canada. Storminess later in the week will help ensure the air quality remains good, as the winds and precipitation from storms disperses accumulated yuckiness in the air.

New Delhi, India, Choking In Toxic Smog

Thick smog in New Delhi this month. Photo by Altaf
Qadri/Associated Press

In 1952, a deadly smog enveloped London, England.   

In those days, coal and polluting fuels heated homes and businesses and basically powered the city.

During one of those famous London fogs, all those pollutants got trapped within the fog, causing a four-day dense cloud of smog that killed an estimated 4,000 people.

London has literally cleaned up its act, and pollution there rarely gets to dangerous levels.

Not so in other cities in the world.  Beijing, China is famous for its toxic pollution.

So is New Delhi, India, which is now enveloped in a smog so bad that it's being compared to that terrible London smog of 1952.

The smog cloud in New Delhi, like most pollution outbreaks is caused by an inversion, which is warm air over the top of cooler air that acts like a lid, preventing pollutants and smoke and such from rising and moving away. So it sits there.

Illegal crop burning at farms surrounding New Delhi, vehicle emissions and construction activity and dust are pouring into the New Delhi air, and the pollutants keep accumulating under this inversion.

The Straights Times says New Delhi is trying to deal with the immediate crisis by reducing the number of cars allowed to be driven on its streets each day, banning commercial trucks unless they're carrying essential commodities, new construction has been stopped and charges for parking cars has quadrupled to force people into public transportation. Schools are shut down.

But that's not really doing the trick. There has been a 20 percent spike in hospitalizations due to heart and lung problems. The amount of microscopic particles in the polluted air is 75 times what the World Health Organization considers safe. Breathing the air is the equivalent of smoking two packs of cigarettes per day. 

And this pollution attack isn't a one-off. It's happening with increasing frequency in New Delhi and other cities in India and elsewhere in Asia.

And remember how I said London and England's air is cleaner? That's true, but it's still too polluted even there. Of 51 British towns and cities in a WHO database, 44 have too much air pollution, the Independent said.

Meanwhile, in the United States, air quality has also improved since the 1960s and 1970s but still sometimes falls short.

Don't expect even cleaner U.S. air in the coming years. Robert Phalen is an appointee to a Trump White House environmental panel. Phalen has said that "Modern air is a little too clean for optimum health."

He claims that children should be exposed to some dirty air to teach their immunie systems to ward off irritants, or something like that.

Hope you love breathing microscopic, toxic particles, folks!

Canada's Fire Weather Spread Into Minnesota, Other U.S. Areas, Too.

Cover photo from Canada's National Post illustrates
the utter destruction of Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada.  

The cataclysmic Fort McMurray wildfire rages on, and the weather that caused that fire spread into the Upper Midwest.

Fires broke out there, too.

While certainly tiny in comparison to Fort McMurray, wildfires in northern Minnesota prompted evacuations and threatened numerous homes.

An assisted living facility was evacuated as a precaution in Minnesota, the Duluth News Tribune reported. 

It's not in immediate danger, but they wisely wanted to get residents out of the way in case the wind changes direction and drives the fire toward the facility.

Television station KARE reported one fire in northern Minnesota had consumed 450 acres as of Friday and was only 10 percent contained.

The temperature reached 92 degrees in Duluth, Minnesota Friday, the earliest 90 degree reading on record there. That reading also broke the previous record high for the date by a full 10 degrees.

Minneapolis also had a record high for the date Friday at 92 degrees. Saturday morning Minneapolis was among the places stuck in a murky cloud of grey smoke.

Air pollution is a big problem in places like Wisconsin and Minnesota now, too. Smoke from Fort McMurray, combined with smoke from local wildfires, has made fine particulates in the air skyrocket.

Scattered thunderstorms arrived later Friday in northern Minnesota, cooling the temperatures and providing a little wetting.

But the rain wasn't enough to contain fires, or eliminate the fire danger across northern Minnesota. Red flag warnings are up for today because windy dry weather could encourage more wildfires.