Today's air quality report from Missoula City-County Air Quality Specialist Sarah Coefield:
"We're seeing smoke from our local fires as well as some out-of-state smoke that decided to pay us a visit late last night. The combination is creating conditions that range from Unhealthy to Hazardous across the county, with a pocket of less horrid air along I-90 from Frenchtown to Alberton. (Frenchtown is Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups and Alberton is Moderate. For now. There is a good chance they will deteriorating air quality later this morning.)
When air quality is Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups, people with heart or lung disease, children and the elderly should limit prolonged outdoor exertion.
It's bad out there, folks. The Lolo Peak, Sunrise, Liberty and Rice Ridge fires were all really active last night, and that led to new smoke that ended up trapped under the inversion. Conditions in Florence are beyond Hazardous right now. The Lolo Peak Fire continued is southward push, and it is swamping the Florence area with smoke. The portable monitors we're using get a little less trustworthy at super high particulate concentrations, but right now, the monitor in Florence hit an hourly PM2.5 average of 1,111 ug/m3 this morning. This is the worst we've seen in Missoula County so far this year. There were numbers like this coming off the Sunrise Fire when there was a monitor at Quartz Creek, but there are a lot more people living in Florence than in Quartz Creek. I'm hopeful that this will not be as relentlessly repeated as what we're seeing in Seeley Lake, but it is important that folks living in the Bitterroot Valley near the Lolo Peak Fire take steps to protect themselves from the smoke. There are some useful wildfire smoke tips on our website on the Climate Smart Missoula website. Please consider using a portable room air filter to create a clean air refuge in a room in your home.
The air quality is also Hazardous in Lolo and Seeley Lake, and Seeley Lake's numbers are only a little bit better than what we're seeing in Florence.
When air quality is Hazardous, all people should limit or avoid outdoor exertion and leave the area or stay indoors with filtered air when possible. Anyone experiencing symptoms of heart or lung disease associated with smoke exposure should contact their health care provider. The Health Department has recommended Seeley Lake residents get out of the smoke if they are able to. You can find the official recommendation and some helpful resources online.
Conditions in Florence, Lolo and Seeley Lake should improve later today when the inversions break. However, we are still under a high pressure ridge, and the inversions we're seeing in the Bitterroot and Seeley Lake valleys are pretty strong this morning. In addition, it will take longer for the sun to reach a high enough angle to pierce through the smoke to warm up the ground than it did earlier in the summer. We may not start to see significant improvement in these areas until noon or later.
The benefit of inversion break is going to be undercut by the presence of smoke from Oregon, northern California, Washington and Idaho that is hanging overhead across the entire region. The pooled smoke will lift up, but the visiting smoke will come down. Still, conditions in Florence, Lolo and Seeley Lake should be significantly better this afternoon than they were this morning.
Outside of our most impacted communities, the air is Unhealthy in Missoula, Clearwater Junction, Clinton, the Arlee/Evaro area, and the Potomac Valley (conditions in the Potomac Valley may be worse than Unhealthy. There is a lot of Liberty Fire smoke pooled in that valley this morning). It's likely to get worse before it gets better. We're starting to see inversions breaking in the larger valleys, and when that happens, we will see an influx of local and out-of-state smoke. Conditions will remain Unhealthy and may become Very Unhealthy at some monitors.
When air quality is Unhealthy, people with heart or lung disease, smokers, children and the elderly should limit heavy or prolonged exertion and limit time spent outdoors. People with asthma should follow their asthma management plan. People experiencing symptoms of heart or lung disease associated with smoke exposure should contact their health care provider.
We will be under stable atmospheric conditions for most of the day. There is a chance we will see some relief late this afternoon from convective lift and some projected breezes, but I don't expect to see much improvement until pretty late in the day, if at all. It's getting harder for convection alone to overcome the influence of the high pressure when the days are getting shorter and the temperatures are taking longer to heat up. The National Weather Service is predicting afternoon winds kicking up shortly after 12:00 p.m., which would be awesome, but I'm not seeing that optimistic forecast on any other predictive site or the models I look at. The more general consensus is some increased breeziness starting around 5:00 p.m. associated with an incoming cold front. I hope Weather Service is correct, and we will have strong winds to scour the valleys clear. But for now, I think we should plan on crummy air quality for most, if not all of the day.
The high pressure will finally start breaking down tonight, and tomorrow afternoon we are looking at strong, sustained winds from a passing cold front. This will provide the opportunity for a real break from the smoke. It will be a great time to open your windows, air out your lungs, circulate fresh air through your HVAC and automobile air conditioning, etc. Unfortunately, the break will be short-lived. We are seeing more high pressure heading our way this weekend, and it will last into at least the beginning of next week. Also, the strong winds from the cold front are likely to lead to increased fire activity, and there is the risk of new fire starts from passing thunderstorms. My fire-specific Inciweb links have been causing some systems to view these emails as spam, so here's a nice, clean link to Montana incidents."
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