Air quality in Yosemite Valley is going off the chart

This morning, from South Side Drive, you could not see the other side of the Valley. From the front door of the Valley Admin office you could not see Yosemite Falls - even if there was water in it.

From the various webcams, the visibility seems to have improved somewhat since this morning? Although looking at the one at Sentinel Dome, the smoke looks really bad. It's worse at higher elevations, perhaps.

I packed a 3M 8577 P95 rated mask ($10 range from Home Depot) when I went hiking in Yosemite with the Aspen Fire still burning. The "P95" rating means that the mask is supposed to filter out 95% of the particulates in the air, including smoke particulates. With an exhalation valve, the mask would have been tolerable if I had to wear it on a smoky hike.

From the California Department of Public Health:
http://www.bepreparedcalifornia.ca.gov/Documents/Protect%20Your%20Lungs%20Respirator.pdf

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Ohnivy-Drak
From the various webcams, the visibility seems to have improved somewhat since this morning? Although looking at the one at Sentinel Dome, the smoke looks really bad. It's worse at higher elevations, perhaps.

The "Yosemite High Sierra" webcam paints the picture.

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Old Dude

I am very sorry to read these accounts of poor air quality in my former home and I hope you receive quick relief. In the horrible Yellowstone Fires of '88, we had scorched pine needles coming to ground some 50 miles from the fires and streetlights coming on at 2:00 PM. As I write this, I can smell smoke from one of the fires in the Absaroka Mountains on the east side of Yellowstone, but it pales in comparison with the Rim Fire.

The smoke has reached Elko. Nv. where visibility was down to a few miles in some locations (which is a really big deal)

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The body betrays and the weather conspires, hopefully, not on the same day.

We went to the crafts fair at Wawona library Saturday around 1 pm and found it to be worse there than it was in Yosemite West, the valley and at Glacier Point. Today it was clear in the valley when we went to get lunch at Degnans.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/02/2013 09:18PM by parklover.