Striking Changes to Air Quality Within a Few Miles
Given we have been subjected to decreased air quality as result of nearby fires I find myself relying on the weather underground website to a great degree, checking the air quality of Sun Valley before venturing out into the community.
As I write this are AQI or air quality index is currently 159 which basically means unhealthy. The Weather Underground website also displays a map of communities in the area and the a QI associated with each one. As of this writing most fall into the hazardous or unhealthy categories which are represented by red or orange dots on the map next to each city.
One thing that jumped out to me, as I looked over this air quality mount, was that while Burbank and Sun Valley had unhealthy air quality our neighbor to the west, North Hollywood, had a green dot with the number 19 and it. This means that for some reason North Hollywood has good air-quality well the city surrounding out have bad air quality. Could this just be an aberration on the part of Weather Underground? Or is it possible M–are there atmospheric conditions—that cause one area to have good air-quality while another the Borders has bad?
I pose the question rhetorically because I don’t really anticipate an answer but it does stimulate some questions. Regardless, we in Sun Valley need only look at the sky most days to determine whether or not it safe to breathe our air. Taking a trip outside this weekend I could indeed smell some smoke, no doubt the results of the still burning Bobcat fire. And I did notice a few caches here in there as the wins pushed the smoke from this fire towards us one more time.
Because of the still burning fires each Sun Valley resident should at least make a cursory check of the weather and air quality before venturing outside.
