Providing news and views from a broadcast engineers perspective since September 1986
They say that bad things come in ‘3’s. In our case could the 3rd be smoke following COVID and Riots?
Not only was summer apparently going to continue, but this year our long run of warm/dry weather meant Fire. Labor day in our area started off with warm/clear skies and then….Wham! We were hit with a thick blanket of smoke, reportedly coming from fires east of the Cascades, as the winds starting blowing from the east. Later those winds became very strong (45 mph), knocking over tall trees into power lines resulting in some serious fires in Graham and then Sumner/Bonney Lake, thereby adding some local smoke to breathe. Normally a switch to on-shore winds would bring in some sweet-smelling ocean air. We got the ocean air OK, and lower temperatures, however, with it came all the smoke that had been blowing westward, some of it from fires in California and Oregon, coming back from a plume that was blow out to sea over 1,000 miles. This stuff was bad, and being labeled as hazardous. I can tell you that a few minutes outside made your throat and chest hurt.
(Click here to continue reading Clay’s Corner for October.)
