(SEATTLE) At one point Wednesday, the wildfire smoke over our area gave us a dubious distinction among the major population centers of the world.
Dirtiest air on the planet.
According to the app IQ AIR, Seattle was worst, followed by a location in Pakistan, then Delhi, India.
4th on the list was Portland, again because of all the wildfire smoke.
It’s happened before. Earlier this summer, wildfire smoke so think that our air quality plummeted worse than places like Beijing. So, at one point yesterday, it became at least the second time this year the Seattle area yesterday had the world’s WORST air quality.
For the record, yesterday when Seattle was number 1, Bejing was number 7. And we could easily end up in the top 5 again today.
“The smoke is in place, and its not going anywhere until we get some Pacific air to push it out of here,” says Meteorologist Gary Schneider at the Seattle office of the National Weather Service. “That’s not going to happen for most of today. Maybe it will start improving in the afternoon from the west as we start getting some westerly breezes.”
Gary says tomorrow is when you will notice a dramatic improvement in air quality.
“We have a front coming in Friday, so that’s going to bring rain and also winds off the ocean, so that combination should clear the smoke out of here pretty quickly,” he says.
