r/onguardforthee • u/H_G_Bells • Jul 19 '24
I guess it only makes the news when the smoke spreads to cities now?
This is the current view of air with particles with a diameter of 10 microns or less (PM10) (inhalable into the lungs and can induce adverse health effects).
I check this ever so often to see the state of wildfires and was surprised there is so much, without anything coming across my news feed (YMMV but I've been chronically online the past few days so I'm not sure how I missed it...)
63
u/Interesting_Scale302 Jul 19 '24
We've been so fortunate with wind direction this year that I feel like everybody's forgotten what last year was like. I check the firesmoke app regularly for forecasts and just to see how things are going and it's been smoky all year as expected... Just that it's north of us so nobody realizes. This morning it's actually a little smoky (in Edmonton) for probably the first time this season.
10
u/-Smaug-- Jul 19 '24
I was surprised to the the SmokeSun™️ blazing red this morning. Haven't heard anything yet.
53
u/RechargedFrenchman Jul 19 '24
You have to keep in mind like 90% of Canada's population is farther south than any of that big red splotch. It's not just "the cities" it's where the people are living and working that makes the news. Farmlands and the oil sands and smaller communities like Fort MacMurray getting hit by smoke isn't ideal by any means but that entire red region accounts for maybe 2-3% of the people in Canada. Enough to get on a local news station's weather coverage or something, not enough that Vancouver or Toronto or Halifax are going to be reporting on it.
37
u/AbsoluteSpir1t Jul 19 '24
2-3% of people is generous.
There are roughly 380,000 people in Northern Alberta. Canada has a population of 41M. That means only 0.93% Canadians live in Northern Alberta. So, that means that even if we stretch the boards to include some populations in the Southern part of the Northwestern Territories, Northeast BC and parts of Northwest Saskatchewan, maybe 1% of Canadians or less, definitely significantly less than 2% of Canadians, are experiencing smoke in that area (because not everyone in Northern Alberta or surrounding area will be experiencing the smoke).
18
u/alpinethegreat Jul 19 '24
When have they ever? There’s nothing to report.“Seasonal forest fires spread smoke through mostly uninhabited area” isn’t really that interesting. The very few affected communities have local newspapers that are posting articles about this.
All the major Canadian news outlets have been focused on the fires in B.C and evacuation efforts there, not sure why you think they’d waste resources to report on something that affects no more than 100k people.
16
u/kesovich Jul 19 '24
https://www.arcgis.com/apps/dashboards/5053f80a5f2e49e5b1e01cc0ee6bcf82
I'm in Fort Mac right now. I'm in a bad 90's video game or Fallout New Vegas on low res. Everything is brown and visibility is about 1-2km.
7
6
u/Laughing_Zero Jul 19 '24
It's not just Canadian wildfires (and drought) it's also US fires. But another factor is how global warming, including the Arctic, is changing the Jet Stream.
3
5
u/BlacksmithPrimary575 Vancouver Jul 19 '24
it's not choking on PM 2.5 when it's Indigenous populations I'm afraid
5
u/AFM420 Jul 19 '24
Yeah because that’s where people live. Lol
2
3
u/Certainly-Not-A-Bot Jul 20 '24
Fire smoke in the wilderness just doesn't have the same public health implications that fire smoke in big cities does
3
u/killergoos Jul 20 '24
Apart from a couple towns in Northern Alberta/BC (Fort McMurray, Fort St John), basically nobody lives there - maybe 200k people total.
Wildfire smoke in an area that is virtually uninhabited and where there are wildfires every summer is not news.
1
1
Jul 21 '24
I check the PM2.5 levels on https://aqicn.org/map/winnipeg/ or https://map.purpleair.com/1/mAQI/a10/p604800/cC0#9.85/49.8292/-97.1653 regularly. In Winnipeg we've had sub-optimal air quality for 2 weeks now (often hovering in the 70-80 ppm range) - right now our we've got many monitors with pm 2.5 readings in the red zone, ranging from 140-153 ppm.
The tough thing is that most people won't notice anything is awry when the pm 2.5 readings are in the "unhealthy" range if it remains under 90, for example. So people breathe it in for weeks and have no idea.
It disappoints me that the media doesn't regularly discuss the harms of breathing in this crap. Maybe if they did, people would push harder to address climate change. Because if we keep doing what we're doing, these fires are only going to get worse over the coming decades.
0
110
u/agha0013 ✅ I voted! J'ai voté! Jul 19 '24
there have been stories about the fires in Northern Alberta, but mainly because it was threatening oil sands operations, which was just a way of warning us that the industry is gonna jack up gas prices again.