There has been a fire burning at the coast of N.C. since June 1st. June-freakin-1. Today however, there was what must have been a major shift in the winds so that the smoke has blown all the way from the coast to l’il ol’ Chapel Hill/Carrboro. The longer the day grew, the worst the smoke.
We are now in a Code Red air quality alert and I am feeling it. I was curious about those winds shifting from the East and John Fleck share with me quite a few links to maps and weather data which only a climate-nerd like John would have (said with the utmost respect, mind you).
My favorite is the NOAA “Fire Hazard Mapping System” image. I guess I didn’t know the NOAA kept such a thing – but its pretty impressive to see the smoke drifts from the current North American fires. Its also interesting to see how many fires are burning too. Amazing.
We are only 7 days into June and stuck with this weather? Add to that a dewpoint of 71° F and an Orange code air quality warning. Not a good day for me to even think of going outside.
We were finally coming out of our massive drought – I sure hope we aren’t seeing a trend that plunges us back in.
One of our local TV stations has a new drought map that is localized to our state.
Its become quite depressing with no real end in sight. Thank goodness we haven’t had any fires.
Update: OK, maybe some relief is in sight.. not an end, but relief. If we could make a pattern out of this…
If you take a look at the 6 Week U.S. Drought Monitor (thanks to John Fleck for that link) you will notice that here in central North Carolina we move from Moderate to Extreme drought conditions in very quick order. I could walk outside and take photos of dried up, brown leaves – wilted plants – dead trees – and brown grass but that would just be depressing.
I suppose at the very least all we are suffering from is ugly yards so far but still, this is getting crazy.
Rain is forecasted for tomorrow but considering the last time we saw any is measured in months, I’m not placing bets for it actually happening. I hate to say it, but we sure could use a good ol’ fashioned category one hurricane right now.
Note: I suppose I should make the obvious point that if you view the 6 week drought monitor 6 weeks from the original date of this post… it will have changed. Lets hope for the better.
Update: We got it! Woo! Rain started around 3-ish and is still going at 7-ish. Heavy at times. Now we just need it to continue for about a month.
Many times I come up with ideas that I have little to no experience or education to take as far as I would like to. Case in point: At work we’ve been thinking quite a bit about GIS in relation to our work. Now I am a formally trained GIS engineer (betcha didn’t know that… betcha also didn’t know that I’m even published in Earth Observation Magazine, did ya?) so that part is fine. However, while in the middle of working on a proposal for something almost totally unrelated, I started thinking about using GIS (and related technologies) to monitor and study environmental factors to either predict or study disease outbreaks. Probably not a revolutionary idea, but it interested me when I thought about it and I started to look around. I found nothing.
What I took for granted was that Professor Climate (I coin that name with love) is so well connected he would find exactly what I was looking for, without even knowing I was looking for it – namely, this article entitled “Remote Sensing and Human Health: New Sensors and New Opportunities”. Um… yeah – that’s exactly it. … what’s that? He loves Muffin Man too? What a great American.
Now comes the brain pain – so people do actually do this sort of thing and that’s cool, but I suspect they are either environment or health experts – I am neither. So how do I make some use of that in our work? I have absolutely no idea yet. I’ll keep thinking about it though.
It was 104° today with a heat index of 112° (meaning it feels like 112°)
Relative humidity was only 46% but the real “feel nasty” numbers are:
The dewpoint is 72° but our low never got there bottoming out at 76°. That means loads of moisture in the air and none of it sticking to the ground overnight.
We are under an air stagnation alert and an a very obvious heat advisory. The ozone readings are high, the particulate matter readings are high.
It sucks out.
One thing folks like me hate to see in the news is a story accompanying weather that includes lines like “ground level ozone concentrations within the region may approach or exceed unhealthy standards”. Of course, I don’t need a story to tell me that.
What I’m trying to say is, its nasty out.
Update: After thinking about this post, I was interested in seeing how July 2007 compared to last July in the Air Quality Index (AQI) statistics. Unfortunately not all of this year’s numbers have been verified for the month of July but I’ll show them both anyway.
July 2006 
July 2007 
Clearly this year’s July was better than last though we are off to a bad start for August.
I’m making some ribs for this evening and I have to say that going outside in 95° F weather and standing over a smoker full of glowing charcoal is not exactly… fun. I am sure, however, that once I bite into the first one all the pain will be forgotten. I certainly don’t make them as tasty as our friends Bryan and Susan can but truth be told, it is hard to make a bad rib. My signature is in using two kinds of paprika, a sharp variety and a sweet variety. mmmmmmmmmmmmmm, ribs.
I just read this:
Wednesday: Hazy sunshine and quite hot. Highs in the low 100s. An excessive heat warning is in effect today. It will feel like 110+ this afternoon. This is dangerous heat! Do your best to stay out of the sun during the hottest part of the day which is from noon to 6pm. Heat exhaustion and heat stroke can come on easily in this kind of heat.
The TV weather people put part of it in a red font too. Sure, TV people are always a little over dramatic but, yesterday I had two different asthma attacks from simply going outside to my air conditioned car. All I can say is that I am very tired of hot.
