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I'm in Spokane, and on the PurpleAir website there are readings >500 all around, even in the city, which is not (yet) burning. The air outside is subjectively awful, the worst I can recall in 20 years living here. I'll be holing-up today with fans/filters running, not that it will do much good.

What's burning, at least nearby, is not forests AFAIK, it's grasslands.

[seanmcdirmid]

I used aqicn, so maybe its dataset isn’t as accurate. But anything close to 300 is going to feel uncomfortable, 500 unbearable. I’ve been exposed to 1000 in Beijing before that really sucked.

Good luck out there.

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Thanks. I'm fortunate not to live in Medical Lake or nearby, where the most destructive fires (in terms of $damage$ anyway) are still ongoing.

I know little about these air quality sites, how accurate they are, or if they are all measuring the same things in a normalized way. I just latched on to the PurpleAir info, as I'd at least once seen the site favorably mentioned here on HN and the UI is pretty tolerable to me. If the world is going to burn around me I should probably study-up on such things rather than, oh, on the latest Scala db access lib. :-) The local media is referencing aqi.in as a source, not sure if this is related to your aqicn one:

"SPOKANE, Wash. - Five of the top ten cities with the worst air quality in the world are in the Spokane Metro area, according to aqi.in. Mead sits at number one with an AQI of 502. Spokane is number four with an AQI of 444. Airway Heights is ranked sixth with an AQI of 426. Spokane Valley sits at number eight with an AQI 392. Cheney is sitting at number ten with an AQI of 370." https://inx.lv/mi5K [khq.com]

The outside light this afternoon was truly dim due to the haze - I could see smoke in the air less than 50' away. Eyes watering, awful smell ... I can't imagine what that AQI=1000 Beijing experience would have been like ... almost seems non-survivable, at least if it's the same sort of pollutants. We're getting organic ash (yes, we paid xtra for it!) from grass/trees/shrubbery &etc but also getting the combustion products from hundreds of houses+vehicles that have gone up in flames over the past few days. All kinds of plastics and rubber and electronics ingredients I would think.

I haven't heard if all this is going to blow towards Seattle or PDX but if it does they're not gonna be happy. We'll have to figure out how to blame it on Canadians if it does cross the Cascades.

[seanmcdirmid]

I live in Seattle but just started a two week trip to Tokyo, so hopefully it’s all done when we get back. I have lots of family in Spokane, and my cousin was posting a fire evacuation map on Facebook from around near where he lives.

An AQI of 1000 typically means a dust storm in Beijing blowing in from the Gobi desert, or, conversely, very stagnant air with almost no wind. It’s a weird experience, but survivable.