Air quality alerts

[prairiewindmomma]

I checked the smoke maps this morning on fire.airnow.gov and I see that a good chunk of the Great Lakes area is in the red zone. This is a gentle reminder that even if it’s not sufficiently smoky to irritate your eyes or lungs that there are microparticles of really toxic stuff in that smoke and you want to be filtering your air. A corsi-rosenthal box is inexpensive and effective.  As it looks like it may be a rough summer for you, courtesy of Canada, you might also consider creating one clean room where you use clear plastic sheeting and painter’s tape to create a hard seal over your windows and a partition over the doorway with a corsi box in the room to give yourself a break from the cumulative stress of longer term exposure. 
 

Best wishes, and fingers crossed for a wind shift for y’all.

[mommyoffive]

Wow, thanks for that.  We have had so much rain that I wasn't even thinking about this where we are.  Sigh.   😞

[Acadie]

Thanks for the heads up. Okay here for now, and I’m really hoping dd’s graduation weekend will be clear so we can dine outdoors with family coming into town. Wildfire smoke + Covid precautions are such an excruciating combo. 

Edited May 13 by Acadie

[Faith-manor]

Thanks. I forgot to check this morning. This means I need to keep a close watch on the garden because if ash residue accumulates on the leaves of the plants, it affects respiration/photosynthesis. All last May and June, I had to rinse the plants regularly.

Edited May 13 by Faith-manor

[athena1277]

As bad as last year was with Canadian wildfires, you would almost think that there’s not much left to burn.  Praying it’s not nearly as bad as last year.

[Faith-manor]

It is a 31 aqi currently here. I hope this holds while we are in Virginia, and my gardens are largely unattended.

Lots of hugs to everyone who is struggling with this today. My heart goes out to everyone in the world in wildfire zone right now. Be safe, please.

[prairiewindmomma]

https://www.nifc.gov/nicc-files/predictive/outlooks/NA_Outlook.pdf

This is the North America fire outlook projections….it does not look encouraging for Alberta or BC.

Edited May 13 by prairiewindmomma

[kbutton]

I hadn’t been paying attention. Our index is 50–we are south of MI, but maybe we’re getting bits. It could just be our normal crud though. I’ve noticed a tickle in my throat now and then for no reason, and several people have had it too (we mask everywhere). 

[prairiewindmomma]

31 minutes ago, athena1277 said:

As bad as last year was with Canadian wildfires, you would almost think that there’s not much left to burn.  Praying it’s not nearly as bad as last year.

About 1/19 of the forest fuel loads across Canada have burned so far. Snowpack was about 90% normal last year for much of Canada, it hit about 60% this past winter. I expect the next 10-15 years of summer to be rough as all of the boreal forests die due to climate change. 😭

[Faith-manor]

15 minutes ago, prairiewindmomma said:

About 1/19 of the forest fuel loads across Canada have burned so far. Snowpack was about 90% normal last year for much of Canada, it hit about 60% this past winter. I expect the next 10-15 years of summer to be rough as all of the boreal forests die due to climate change. 😭

And yet so many people "Climate Change is a Hoax"! Sigh. It is right in front of our faces, and the natural disasters are just getting closer and closer together.

[mommyoffive]

6 hours ago, prairiewindmomma said:

About 1/19 of the forest fuel loads across Canada have burned so far. Snowpack was about 90% normal last year for much of Canada, it hit about 60% this past winter. I expect the next 10-15 years of summer to be rough as all of the boreal forests die due to climate change. 😭

Dumb question.  If they got 90% of their normal snowpack  last year, why were the wildfires so bad?  Did they have a drought after that and the snowpack didn't matter?

[mommyoffive]

2 more questions 

Our masks from Covid days are good for this too correct?  Like our Kn95 masks will work?

What level would you wear a mask outside for when you are outside?

[Faith-manor]

9 hours ago, mommyoffive said:

Dumb question.  If they got 90% of their normal snowpack  last year, why were the wildfires so bad?  Did they have a drought after that and the snowpack didn't matter?

Two things:

First, Canada immediately had a spring drought following the snowy winter. The conditions were much much warmer than has been historically (in terms of humanity time frames) normal. High temps and dry were the impetus.

Second, while 90% sounds good, it is still 10% less and that less means the water table is lower. 10% means vegetation is holding less moisture making it easier to catch fire. For some types of trees, 10% is all it takes to be the difference between healthy and heat resistant vs. kindling for the fire. Add to that wind conditions that allow a very small fire to whoosh rapidly into a massive one, and you have a disaster.

It is a lot like talking about climate change in terms of heat. My nephew, brother in law, several other relatives keep maintaining "What is 1 or 2 degrees warmer? That's nothing!" But they get rather quiet when I ask them what is the difference between 98.6 and 99.6 or 100.6 in a human - healthy to sick. The difference between 96 and 95 in a human - cold vs. hypothermia. The difference between 106 and 107 - brain cell death. In terms of the earth, the difference between 33 and 32 - freezing or not freezing. 1 or 0, subfreezing to subzero. 1 degree of difference and ice sheets are melting, ocean levels rising. They usually get quiet and concede the point, but they also still want to spout and not believe because they are resistant to anything that challenges their status quo.

😉 I also know I am "preaching to the choir" here. It's just that a lot of people do not realize how quickly trees, underbrush, ground vegetation become too dry to resist heat over drops in their moisture content. Pine trees are often a cause because when too warm, their sap/resin can ignite. That stuff is crazy flammable. Pine trees have been known to actually explode. It is wild, and terrifying. Northern Michigan is covered in them, and though we have not, prior to this latest threshold of warming, been a hot zone for wildfires, we had a huge one by Grayling, MI last spring. May and June in this state, for most of its human inhabitants' history, has been very mild, cooler temps. We had 90 degree days and a drought. Such a bad idea for northern pine. Then it was further complicated by how much dead ash tree we have due to the invasion of the emerald ash borer which has decimated the ash tree population. So there were huge, forested areas with acreage of dead ash trees laying around, and pine trees ready to pop their skins from the drop in moisture content along with temps they normally do not feel. As a child, the whole concept of "going up north" in the summer and experiencing 90 degree temps was just an insane thought. The same for my parents, and their grandparents, and great great parents. In the rare case of it, it would be a day. No many days, not weeks.

Climate change has entered its terrifying stage.

[kbutton]

9 hours ago, mommyoffive said:

2 more questions 

Our masks from Covid days are good for this too correct?  Like our Kn95 masks will work?

What level would you wear a mask outside for when you are outside?

I wear a KN95 even in the car when it’s bad out. I would probably use an N95 if I had to be outside.

We ran filters like crazy in the house last summer on bad days.

It doesn’t take much to irritate my lungs. I will feel “off” without knowing why in the barely yellow zone (if I haven’t looked at the air index), and it’s not unusual here to have some bad air quality days without wild fires (between two moderately sized metro areas that are all but touching these days). 

[prairiewindmomma]

10 hours ago, mommyoffive said:

2 more questions 

Our masks from Covid days are good for this too correct?  Like our Kn95 masks will work?

What level would you wear a mask outside for when you are outside?

Our vehicles have Hepa filters, so I dont mask in them. We limit time outdoors, but when we do go out, I have to wear a N95 once the AQI goes over 100. Fwiw, this is ok for a few days. Once we are several days into a high aqi event, I either need to sit in front of a corsi box or I mask indoors too. I think I mentioned on the boards in 2020 that our normal hepa filters werent keeping up in my modern/good windows house? Putting two corsi boxes in one room finally brought our aqi indoors to a tolerable level. So, duration and smoke load matter.

[prairiewindmomma]

Re: fires….yes to drought, higher temperatures, and insect damage all stressing trees and making weather conditions favorable to hot, high burns. I will also add decades of fire surpression and forestry management practices have added to the fuel load.

Here, most forests are “artificial” in the sense that they are planted, densely, in a monoculture species. They are designed and planted for lumber production. They are not what nature would create—a variety of species with open bits of sunlight in the canopy, with trees spaced much further apart. Lightning would start smaller fires, burning out the undergrowth and killing insects, creating burnouts that are natural breaks for future fires. Instead, we have planted conditions for mega fires.

In my state, we have an estimated 1.1 million acres of dead fir trees from the mega heat dome we had a couple of years ago + boring beetle and root fungus disease….1700 square miles ready to burn. Drought makes trees stressed = more prone to disease and insect damage. Forest managers expect the western red cedar to die off completely and the majority of douglas firs to die in the next 20 years. The giant sequoia down the street from me are dying also. 

[prairiewindmomma]

Fwiw, at 2C (2 degrees Celcius global average temperature rise—the actual temperatures will be higher in some places and lower in others), the heat dome we had in 2021 will be 100-200x more likely (ie what had been a 1/1000 year event becomes a 1/5 year event) and direct flooding damage doubles.

We’re currently at about 1.5C. This is why we are seeing droughts followed by floods, an increase in damaging storms, weird weather as jet streams become unstable, fish dieoff, and massive forest fires. We are already experiencing harm from climate change…a fraction of what is to come. We already have “baked in” a lot of future damage just from our current CO2 levels. Our emissions continue to rise every year—we havent been able to stabilize, let alone reduce levels.

Edited May 14 by prairiewindmomma

[mom31257]

We want to go to the UP in June, so I guess I should be investigating this further. 

[Faith-manor]

1 minute ago, prairiewindmomma said:

Fwiw, at 2C (2 degrees Celcius global average temperature rise—the actual temperatures will be higher in some places and lower in others), the heat dome we had in 2021 will be 100-200x more likely and direct flooding damage doubles.

We’re currently at about 1.5C. This is why we are seeing droughts followed by floods, an increase in damaging storms, weird weather as jet streams become unstable, fish dieoff, and massive forest fires. We are already experiencing harm from climate change…a fraction of what is to come. We already have “baked in” a lot of future damage just from our current CO2 levels. Our emissions continue to rise every year—we havent been able to stabilize, let alone reduce levels.

This. 

Algae Bloom has become a real problem on the Great Lakes caused by warm winters, too warm springs, and fertilizer run off. No one listens. We needed regenerative farming practices 30 years ago to stop the petroleum based nitrogens being sprayed on the crops. I don't blame farmers. They have been doing what the Department of AG tells them to do in order to feed the world. This needed to be a top down policy change when scientists said, "STOP" not an individual farmer decision. Combined with high CO2 this was a massive, ticking time bomb. These algae blooms are not of beneficial algae but toxic algae that can make people sick, kills fish and wildlife, could even kill a child if exposed to enough of it. It pollutes groundwater, destroys native fish populations, wrecks absolute havoc. Lake Superior, once thought to be immune from such destruction, has been experiencing these blooms now due to warming water temps making it now possible for this crap to live in this once very cold, very in polluted lake. The Great Lakes contain 22% of the entire planet's freshwater. If we trash these waters, humans will pay in spades! Wildfire ash only makes the situation worse.

The train had left the tracks and still, nothing changes in any substantial way. And it isn't on you, me, and the little guy to do it. Low income and middle class are not even close to the primary polluters and causes. The wealthy are the worst with the top 2% of earners causing 35% of pollution, all those fortune 500 companies.

This is me staring directly at the Big 3 automakers for dumping benzene, lead, mercury, you name it into the Flint watershed, and then doing not one damn thing to clean it up. I am staring directly at the Department of Defense for burying tens of thousands of barrels of PFA fire regarding in shallow tombs at the old Wurtsmith Air Base in Oscoda, Mi, barrels which they new within 20 years would rust out and cause these carcinogens just a couple miles inland of Lake Huron to leak and poison wells, city water, and the Lake, causing even more aquatic nightmare leading to more algae blooms and wildlife and human die off. I am staring at the petroleum industry who has known for decades, and then suppressed evidence and reports, engaged in wicked propaganda and bribery to maintain their profits no matter how many humans suffer and die. This is me staring at the Department of Ag, ConAgra, Monsanto. I blame leadership who has been 100% complicit and cares more for power and lifestyle than the people and planet they represent. I don't blame my neighbors, the local hardware owner or anyone else at the absolute mercy of these overlords. We have to drive cars because they refused to invest in rail and buses. We have to continue on in order to care for our families even if that just makes the future even more bleak. 

Between increasing frequency and strength of hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and wildfires, I see a time fast approaching when no insurance company will sell homeowner insurance to any of us little guys. What happens then? Will the powers that be take any notice of the number of us kicked to the streets by banks because we can't insure our property? 

[prairiewindmomma]

Have you seen the NYT article from May 13 entitled “The Home Insurance Crunch: See What is Happening in your State”?

It shows that in many states companies are paying out more than they are taking in in premiums, primarily due to secondary perils like hail damage. It’s not just a hurricane/wildfire state problem….

[prairiewindmomma]

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/05/13/climate/home-insurance-profit-us-states-weather.html

 

Finally got the link to work…

[prairiewindmomma]

Here’s a recent map of reinsurance markets getting dropped: 

https://www.newsweek.com/map-shows-9-states-where-homeowners-are-losing-their-insurance-1875252

[prairiewindmomma]

We’ve contemplated a number of options, including selling our house and becoming renters so that we are out of the market before our house would become uninsurable and so that we arent bearing a large risk with re: to a valuable asset….but honestly, it’s hard to find a state anywhere that looks “safe”. I do think we’re on the verge of serious insurance market collapse and states trying to offer insurance of last resort arent going to be able to balance the books. I look to the firststreet.org and FEMA risk maps—hopefully we can start assessing risk by address in the future rather than by states in attempt to salvage things. My risk is not the same as a cabin in the woods 30 minutes from me, and we shouldnt be assessed the same rates. There are absolutely places where people shouldnt be building.

[Faith-manor]

4 hours ago, prairiewindmomma said:

Here’s a recent map of reinsurance markets getting dropped: 

https://www.newsweek.com/map-shows-9-states-where-homeowners-are-losing-their-insurance-1875252

I am actually quite shocked that Minnesota is on that list and Florida is not. I am a bit flummoxed.

[mommyoffive]

12 minutes ago, Faith-manor said:

I am actually quite shocked that Minnesota is on that list and Florida is not. I am a bit flummoxed.

Same.

[prairiewindmomma]

Apparently Minnesota had a freak hail storm last August that led to a billion dollars in claims….and there have been many hail storms and tornadoes in MN in recent years.

If you look at recent storm data, that bit on MN and WI from Twin Cities and then south on down to the border and across has been hit with a lot of nasty weather in the last several years. As that band warms in temperatures, it’s getting stronger storms.

ETA: I cant believe they havent pulled out of FL yet either.

Edited May 15 by prairiewindmomma

[kbutton]

Why is South Dakota on the list?

6 hours ago, prairiewindmomma said:

We’ve contemplated a number of options, including selling our house and becoming renters

Are you in one of the states in the map, or is this more theoretical? I assume liability is going to be passed along to renters in the form of exorbitant rent and/or neglect of properties, especially as rentals become increasingly owned by companies.

I wonder if companies are going to start having to add flexibility in for families to stay together geographically for affordability and support. Or flat out offer housing support like they did in company towns and manufacturing (not always well!).

[prairiewindmomma]

I am in a state where insurance companies have been pulling out due to wildfires and it’s hard to get earthquake insurance. It’s not as bad as FL, but if our legislature doesnt permit insurance companies more flexibility on who they write for, I dont know that many will stay. As it is, there are parts of my state that are virtually uninsurable currently.

I suspect that many people who outright own their homes in lower risk areas will choose to go without insurance and take a gamble, as they do in FL And TX, but I dont think my personal comfort level is there. 
 

 

[prairiewindmomma]

@kbutton, you asked about SD. It appears SD is having a huge increase in hail damage claims, particularly in the southeast of the state. Several articles pointed to bands of storms going from SD, through IA and into southern MN. Straight line winds/derechos and tornados were also frequent mentions. I havent been able to find claim amounts though in my quick search…the 8 billion in crop insurance payouts figure pops up quickly instead.