This is what downtown #pdx looks like from about 1/2 mile away. #thisisclimatechange #pdxtst pic.twitter.com/rXR7FGRgoW
— Leslie Carlson (@QueenLeslie1982) August 22, 2015
Update 9:25 a.m.: With Portland’s air quality steadily improving, Southeast Sunday Parkways is on. Here’s the PBOT statement:
Given current information and data from the last 12 hours, the City plans to move forward with the Sunday Parkways event but urges all Portlanders to use their best judgement and caution when making their decision about participating in activities outdoors throughout the day, particularly individuals with regular respiratory concerns (i.e. small children, the elderly, chronic asthma sufferers).
As of 8 a.m. Sunday, the state DEQ’s Southeast Portland station reported that air quality had improved to “moderate” on a one-hour scale but remained “unhealthy” when the last 24 hours were taken into account. The National Weather Service says the DEQ’s “air quality alert” remains in effect until 5 p.m.
Saturday evening’s post follows.
Will tomorrow be the first Sunday Parkways postponed on account of global climate change? It could happen.
Some of Portland’s streets are eerily empty tonight as the massive wildfires east of the Cascades send their smoke west into the city.
The yellowish haze was so bad by Saturday afternoon that Multnomah County urged people to use TriMet rather than biking or “at the very least, drink more H2O.”
Bike riders: consider taking @trimet today. Air quality is unhealthy for all. At the very least, drink more H2O. http://t.co/CWYzfpVyv0
— Multnomah County, OR (@multco) August 22, 2015
It’s not an idle concern. Until I read Portland State University student Alex Bigazzi’s award-winning research into pollution inhalation among bike users, it had never occurred to me that people biking are at more risk from dirty air than people driving, because they’re breathing harder and ingesting more particulates per second.
Ordinarily, the other health benefits of biking outweigh the harm from increased pollution. But an especially bad day like today may be one of the rare days when biking is not good for your health.
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Here is some information and advice released at 6 p.m. Saturday from the state Department of Environmental Quality:
Conditions will likely remain very poor overnight, possibly becoming worse, until Sunday afternoon, when winds are expected to shift and blow the smoke out of the region. The wildfire smoke may increase the risk of illness, especially for older adults, young children, and people with asthma, respiratory, or heart conditions.
Should smoke occur, residents can take the following precautions to avoid breathing problems or other symptoms from smoke:
– Be aware of smoke concentrations in your area and avoid the places with highest concentrations.
– You can avoid smoke by staying indoors, closing all windows and doors and using an air filter that removes very fine particulate matter.
Avoid strenuous outdoor activity in smoky conditions.– If you have heart disease, asthma or other lung disease, or are over 65 years of age, you have a higher risk of illness from wildfire smoke. Small children and pregnant women are also at increased risk. People in any of these groups might consider leaving the area until air quality improves.
– People suffering from asthma or other respiratory problems should follow their breathing management plans or contact their healthcare providers. Remember, local smoke levels can rise and fall rapidly, depending on weather factors including wind direction. People can conduct a visual assessment of smoke levels to quickly get a sense of air quality levels and take precautions. If people have additional concerns, they should contact the nearest regional or local public health agency for the latest in health conditions from smoke. Visit the Oregon Smoke Blog for more information regarding active fires and air quality, along with tools to help people assess smoke levels in their area. Check out the Air Quality Index for current conditions.
This is especially unpleasant timing because tomorrow is Southeast Portland Sunday Parkways from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. We’ve asked city officials to let us know if there are any changes of plans or precautions related to smoke, and will update here as we know.
Want to know the most upsetting part of today’s weather, and about the forest fires that have become standard features of summer in the West? Airborne soot itself is one of the atmosphere’s most powerful greenhouse agents.
Correction 9:15 a.m.: I’ve updated the earlier headline in this post to avoid overstating the impact on Portland traffic Saturday; we’ve heard different perspectives on this.
Thanks for reading.
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Is there any precedent for Sunday Parkways rescheduling events? I can’t remember one ever being cancelled/postponed before. Do we know if they’d try to reschedule the SE Parkways for a different date, or if they’d just move on to September’s event and forget about it?
One of the few SW Parkways was cancelled due to wind and rain, or rather expected bad attendance due to expected bad weather.
Friday, September 27, 2013, PBOT announced that the last Sunday Parkways event of that year was canceled due to a forecast of high winds and heavy rain. The forecast was correct. ODOT also issued a travel advisory due to that storm.
http://bikeportland.org/2013/09/27/city-cancels-sunday-parkways-southwest-due-to-weather-concerns-94595
I’m pretty sure that if they canceled this one they’d just wait for the next one. There’s too much planning involved, and conflicts with other plans, to easily move it to another date. I’ll be surprised if they cancel at this late moment.
The 2013 SW Sunday Parkways had a monsoon of rain. Just check the data.
May not be smoky on Sunday in PDX… Smoke (lifts?) goes away with cooler night temperatures.. Less in the morning and more in the afternoons…. Smoke is driven by wind direction and is changing daily…. And fires are starting to come under control and not expanding (less smoke generated)…. We have seen dense smoke come and go in eastern Washington and northern Idaho… Parkways will likely be fine on Sunday…. Happy cycling… Regards
I haven’t personally noticed any change in street traffic.
Like usual, thanks TriMet/whoever… but I think I’ll bike anyway.
I saw no difference in the amount of people out and about in SE PDX this Saturday, and was surprised. The smoke was thick but people just kept doing their weekend activities. There was no “still” on the streets of PDX because of the smoke. Please edit the headline, it is simply not accurate.
Thanks, Brendan. I’ve seen plenty of reports that the streets are less crowded but you’re right that “still” was an overstatement. I’ve changed to “fill,” which I think most of us can agree was the situation late Saturday afternoon.
The moon is spooky right now. I used a wet bandana biking around downtown today. I wonder what The Mercury will call this. “Smokepocalypse” is my bet.
Sure, it isn’t healthy, but if it doesn’t trigger asthma, so what? I mean, it’s only a day or two.
Saw tons of cyclists this evening- in fact, more in Ladd than I’ve ever seen outside commuting hours.
The particulates, also a winter problem in the PNW, also cause brain damage. The mechanism appears to involve their passage through the lungs and ultimately leading to inflammation in the brain. This has been noted to cause IQ damage to children on the order of ingesting lead paint chips, so it’s a serious, if unaddressed, concern.
Then again, the longer we choose to do nothing about our exposure to particulate air pollution, the less we will be inclined to do so. Idiocracy, anyone?
Better get used to this smog. If we don’t curb driving and provide reliable and safe alternatives, more “air quality alert” days are certainly in our future.
you havent’ lived in the NW very long, huh?
I remember when the air quality alert days were nearly daily in the summer. I suspect not many native Portlanders are left living in Portland to remember the days you couldn’t see Mt. Hood from the east side through the smog given that TriMet’s been going backwards and the cycleway system has been stagnant for two decades now. LA just approved funding and will be starting construction shortly on a cycleway improvement package that includes three times as many new bike lane miles by 2020 as metro Portland has built in 40 years combined, and Tulsa’s on it’s way to pass Portland by 2020 and lap it by 2025 (and Tulsa actually has more rain than Portland, and unlike Portland, has summer and winter instead of just spring halfheartedly transitioning into fall around Labor Day and fall transitioning to spring around Oregon Day)
While I saw the usual number of people in parks, there were definitely fewer pedestrians out than usual this afternoon in North Portland. Just a few people walking their dogs.
The Peak To Rising Tide teams running and biking from Timberline to Seaside were undaunted.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/PeaktoRisingTide/
http://bikeportland.org/2015/08/07/diy-relay-event-month-will-echo-hood-coast-bikes-instead-vans-154949
Well, i didnt see any difference in traffic… I think ill cycle what so ever. Maybe we should get used to this smog.
We rode up Ape Canyon and across the Plains of Abraham on St. Helens yesterday and it was even more eery than usual up there, and probably not very healthy. We were on the mountain and could barely see it. Thankfully it cleared a bit for the descent.
The National Weather Service (NOAA & NWS) offer up some rather informative animated and mobile browser compatible maps that shine light in this air quality issue.
http://airquality.weather.gov/sectors/oregonLoop.php#tabs is the “Air Quality Forecast Guidance – Oregon” and you can get current and forcasts of smoke, dust and ozone levels in the atmosphere. Both as animations or still images.
Browsing the navigation tabs will quickly give you access to all the other common weather information needed to fake your own life as a tv weather person. With or without an Ouija board.
We’ll soon need to find an electric respirator for the electric bike (maybe a family-sized filter + fan with extra little face nozzles?) Here’s where a box bike with canopy would be better — just blow filtered air in the front with a slightly raised fairing to keep the driver’s face in a clean breeze?
Smokepocalypse. A non-event.
Unless a person has respiratory issues.
In which case you sound like a rude, juvenile, insensitive **********.
It’s not Jeff’s fault evolution wants someone dead.
Next time you’re sick I’ll make sure to come up to you, laugh sadistically and chide you for being an inferior homo sapiens that should just hurry up and die for the good of mankind.
See, THAT’S how you sound.
If you want to play callous superiority complex I can dust off my teenage years and play verbal smack down all week/month/year long.
Or, it could be that I was deliberately poking fun at the screedy passive-aggressiveness exhibited in this thread over pollution from forest fires that are part of the natural cycle, around longer than any of us, and an unavoidable part of life in the northwest. If you can’t live with the wildfires, the intermountain west probably isn’t the best place to live. You’re probably better off living in a place that has some of the lowest levels of particulate pollution, like Boise City, Oklahoma; Lake City, Colorado; or Cheyenne, Wyoming. Good luck getting a job, though.
BZZZT! Wrong answer! Please play the “I need clean air” game again.
Each of the areas you listed enjoys their polluting heavy industry. These provide year round toxins. Smoke is cyclical
Then again so is pollen; it seems equally valid to tell everyone who allergic to seasonal pollens and plant stuff to go live in a plastic hermetically sealed bubble. Maybe eschew huan contact all together during cold and flu seasons.
But my sensitivity to environmental toxins does seem to have the interesting side benefit of allowing me to eat all the normal allergens for lunch and breeze through cold and flu season without vaccination nor a single sniffle.
Now your passive-aggressive suggestion that I should just go F#$& off is read loud and clear for what it is.
Just because a person has an ability or immunity does not give them the right to suggest that others need to “put up or shut up” or “roll over and die”.
Your suggestions are not humorous, kind, polite nor welcome.
OK, let’s go over this rationally and with facts.
1) Cheyenne, Wyoming: Lowest air particulate count in America according to the American Lung Association (Portland doesn’t even make the list of cleanest air cities by any of the three metrics they rank; in fact, no seaport city did. Who knew having a bunch of poorly regulated ships that barely clean up their act enough to leave international waters would be so dirty?).
2) Boise City, Oklahoma: An agrarian crossroads where the only real industry since The Dustbowl kicked off the Great Depression (which is most definitely still impacts that community today) is as a pit stop halfway between Tulsa and Oklahoma City on the way to get weed in Denver; and Boy Scouts grabbing last minute supplies heading to, or a well-deserved meal they’re not cooking themselves on the way back from Philmont Scout Ranch (which is only about an hour or so west of there). Plagued by a constant wind and tourists piecing together the locations alluded to in Half Life (Black Mesa is, depending on the wind, easily with biking distance; as is Colorado, Texas, New Mexico and Kansas: It’s possible to do a century and hit all five states in a single ride from there). A ~2 mile long bypass completed in 2014 virtually eliminated the town’s biggest pollution (and for that matter, economic) source: Truck traffic on State Highway 3 heading to and from Colorado (which no longer has to jam up while people wind around the roundabout that the county courthouse sits on the central island of).
3) Lake City, Colorado is Hinsdale County’s only settlement. Located at the bottom of a deep valley whose floor is at roughly the 8700 foot level, Lake City is about a two hour drive on a gravel county road over a 10,000 foot mountain pass from Telluride. Featuring no buildings over two stories, a town grid so small you can walk across it in about 40 minutes even before you get used to the altitude, “cheap” gas at nearly $5/gal when the demand is low, no chains at all (it’s all mom-and-pop places in Hinsdale County), and no industrial activity since the 1930s, there’s not really anything to cause pollution in the first place in the lower 48’s most remote city. But, it is surrounded entirely by forest, and I do have a copy of the county newspaper from the weekend I was there in 2013. It was pretty split between covering Bear Days in the Park and the West Fork Complex fire about two hours south and downwind by Creede, so may suffer some of the same factors Portland’s getting once every few years. Not a bad trade for not having industrial pollution or significant vehicle exhaust.
“It’s not Jeff’s fault evolution wants someone dead.”
Dude… have some respect. Evolution hates being anthropomorphized.
Unless a person mis-interprets my comment which was really a statement about media-driven over-hype and then flies off the handle.
In which case you sound like a rude, juvenile, insensitive **********.
does anyone in Sunday Parkways actually ride fast enough for the smoke to really matter? honestly, does anyone’s heart rate actually get high enough? sounds like a bikeportland non-troversy.
For lots of people this ride is one of the more challenging physical activities that they’ll participate in all year.
…and that’s kind of the point. Prove to them that they can do it. Sunday Parkways isn’t about people racing a closed-loop course, it’s about People and particularly families who don’t normally feel safe enough to do it getting out and enjoying the roads.
Even a mild incline while hauling two 30 lb kids in the trailer definitely gets my heart pumping. Not everyone is an olympian like you.
no Olympian, but I’ve never gotten much about 5mph in any Parkways I’ve been to and am on the brakes more than anything. but thanks for the childish remarks. you should exercise more.
Yesterday’s effects from the fire smoke drifting our way were odd, but probably not much of a problem for reasonably healthy people. I rode yesterday, noticed it less than when I was relatively idle. I thought about the fire fighters on the line, and what they deal with.
Sun turned a really strange red color at sunset.
Did anybody else notice they got AM and PM backwards on noon and midnight?
I’ve always thought it makes more sense to say 10am, 11am, 12am, 1pm, 2pm. But that’s just me.
“Will tomorrow be the first Sunday Parkways postponed on account of global climate change?”
Virtually all of the current fires in the PNW have been lightning caused. The dry conditions east of the Cascades are frequent and seasonal and not at all unusual. Offshore winds (which are blowing the smoke to the west) are quite common. This seems like a “natural” disaster to me. I don’t understand the need to spin every catastrophe into a global warming issue. Never let a good crisis go to waste I guess.
“I don’t understand the need to spin every catastrophe into a global warming issue.”
I’m sure the fact that July was the hottest month ever recorded on the planet has nothing to do with this, or the fact that Portland just broke its record for days over 90F which was previously set in 2009, or this:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/24/firefighters-climate-change-drought
135 years of recording temperatures, not what you would call a very long period in terms of the age of the earth.
Go ahead. Keep trying.
Except they’re right.
Of course.
135 years is nothing in terms of age of the earth, but it is a fair bit in terms of modern human society, which was constructed on a certain set of climate patterns. Disrupting those will hardly cause life on earth to go extinct, but it will make things pretty unpleasant for us.
So your point is both true and meaningless.
It isn’t as if 135 years was all we knew. We know an enormous amount about Earth’s temperatures and CO2 concentrations going back millions of years. Why are we being willfully obtuse here?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record
If you think my comment was an attempt to downplay the ramifications of continued emissions of CO2, please read it again.
I didn’t. The comment nested wrong. It was meant as a response to meh.
Fire is a natural part of life in the west. The shortsighted fire suppression over the past 100 years has helped create the mega-fires that we have seen recently (B&B complex back in 2003 is a good example).
Instead of “praying for rain”, people in these fire-threatened areas need to be lobbying their Republican congressional representatives to increase funding for the US Forest Service, so they have conduct better forest management practices that will help prevent these huge fires.
“.. increase funding for the US Forest Service, so they have conduct better forest management practices that will help prevent these huge fires.”
It may be too late for that.
What you say is all correct, but the US Forest Service is already spending half its entire budget on fighting fires. Although we’re one of the richest countries in the world, the prospects of us devoting enough money to the thousands of manifestations of climate change to actually reduce these risks is vanishingly small. For that matter, not burning any more fossil fuels—figuring out how to live well without them—would be a far more effective strategy if we were serious about getting ahead of this problem.
Forest management isn’t just about putting out the fires. In fact, nearly a century of zero-tolerance approaches to wildfire is easily the largest contributing factor to every wildfire in the American west in a minimum of the last 20 years. Which is why the National Parks Service and Bureau of Land Management already has, and the USDA Forest Service is now moving towards a policy of minimal to no fire management if it doesn’t threaten a settlement. It’s also why all three agencies are telling people who live in the woods to make their dwelling a defensible space: Sparse, nonflammable ground gover, keep vegetation away from buildings, build with stone or brick, and avoid tar paper or wood shingle roofing materials: Basically, save it yourself because you’re on your own now.
I was happy to go out Saturday and bike around with the kid because we had a little smokey shade that kept the temps down a bit… then I rode 37 miles Sunday, it seemed hotter and less smokey…
back 10 years ago or more Tri-Met was actually free on bad air quality days to encourage less people to drive. It’s a shame that this doesn’t happen any more.
Wow…Portland’s officially backwards on clean air action days relative to Tulsa, Oklahoma now…when did Portland stop that?
DRIVERS: consider taking @TriMet today. Air quality is unhealthy for all. At the very least, drink more H2O.
mother nature’s law doubles down on godwin’s?
Everyone is inferior, most particularly those that think they are superior.
The best amongst us are those most humble seeking not for their own glory but to alleviate the suffering of others.
Those that revel in the suffering and misery of their fellow sentient…
#this is climate change??? WTH? Seriously?
One of these days you will be able to recognize climate change in everything you look at: crazy weather, high food prices, abandoned cars, increase in diseases, refugees, bike mode share, you name it.
they haven’t lived in town long enough to realize its happened before.
Yeah, cuz throwing more money at a problem always solves it….great!
That was because of global warming!
“Recent weather events such as deadly heat waves and devastating floods have sparked popular interest in understanding the role of global warming in driving extreme weather. These events are part of a new pattern of more extreme weather across the globe, shaped in part by human-induced climate change.
As the climate has warmed, some types of extreme weather have become more frequent and severe in recent decades, with increases in extreme heat, intense precipitation, and drought. Heat waves are longer and hotter. Heavy rains and flooding are more frequent. In a wide swing between extremes, drought, too, is more intense and more widespread.
All weather events are now influenced by climate change because all weather now develops in a different environment than before. While natural variability continues to play a key role in extreme weather, climate change has shifted the odds and changed the natural limits, making certain types of extreme weather more frequent and more intense. The kinds of extreme weather events that would be expected to occur more often in a warming world are indeed increasing.”
https://www.climatecommunication.org/new/features/extreme-weather/overview/#sthash.HdKtEjEG.dpuf