Smokey skies lingering over the Seattle Skyline and Lake Union
Air Quality across the Puget Sound remained in the moderate to unhealthy range on Wednesday following a 4th of July weekend that delivered what one expert called “The worst combination of everything.”
Wildfire Smoke, BBQ grills, fireworks and stagnant air left behind a toxic soup on the 4th of July.
“Folks with pre-existing conditions” Phil Swartzendruber with the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency had some words of warning for the most vulnerable “with heart-lung conditions, with asthma or some other kind of respiratory issue, those folks should be limiting their outdoor exposure.”
At 88 degrees, near record temperatures blanked Seattle and it was hotter the day after the 4th of July.
“We’re going to be peaking out in the upper 80’s to low 90’s” those hot, dry conditions are driving wildfires North & South of Seattle and creating even more smoke says Reid Walcott at the National Weather Service “By the time we get to Thursday evening into Friday we will see the breezes begin to increase and push a lot of this smoke out of the region.”
But fireworks are still wild card “In terms of the next couple of days” Swartzendruber says “that’s probably going to depend on how much fireworks activity there is; usually there’s less on the fifth.”
It’s a wait and see game.
