EPOW - Ecology Picture of the Week

Smoke-filled Skies

Smoke from Nearby Wildfires
Western Oregon, USA

Explanation:  Summer of 2020 had been one of the worst on record for wildfires in the western United States.  

In the state of Oregon alone, by early November there have been 941 total wildfires covering 307,609 acres (124,488 ha), with 776 of them (82%) being human-caused and the rest lightening-caused.  

We can prevent most of these unnaturally-caused wildfires, especially the horrendously damaging ones now spreading faster and more frequently because of increased aridity from regional warming and climate change.

  
I took the photos this week from my home and neighborhood during early September 2020.  

These are not clouds in the photos; they are massive, dense plumes of wildfire smoke that rolled into the area, totally covering a completely blue and clear sky in a matter of 30 minutes or so.  

Local areas were put on alert to evacuate at any time, as the fires continued to spread.  
  

 

Above:  View from our front porch.
This is not fog.
It is dense choking wildfire smoke settled into the area, in an inversion layer.

The following figure is the official AQI, Air Quality Index value
that marks the intensity of this smoke layer:
it "broke" the meter, pegging out worse than the highest level denoted on the meter.
It also marked the local air quality at the time to be
the worst throughout the entire world.