What Level Are We On?

There's a pall over the city. The air is grey, and the mountains just short miles away are invisible, cloaked in gray swirling smoke. When the sun goes down at night, the sky turns into a clash of surly reds and oranges amid angry gray streamers. Sunrises seem distant, muffled in the remainder of yesterday's smoke. Last night, driving back down from Auburn, I thought it looked like an illustration of Dante's Inferno.

Golf course lights peer out of the gloom, recapitulating Mordor. The world seems eerie, changed, dangerous and unknown.

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From: Air Alert
Date: 09/12/06 15:17:38
Subject: Special Health Statement - Elevated PM Levels

The Sacramento Metropolitan Air Quality Management District is issuing this special health statement due to smoke impacting residents of Sacramento County. Although the Ralston Fire is in Placer County, its smoke is now covering the Sacramento Valley due to northerly winds.

If you see or smell smoke, consider restricting your outside activities. Until the weather conditions change and the smoke conditions improve, individuals should consider taking the following actions:

- Healthy people should delay strenuous exercise, particularly when they can see or smell smoke

- Children and the elderly should consider avoiding outdoor activities, particularly prolonged outdoor exertion

- People with heart or upper respiratory illnesses should remain indoors

- Asthmatics should follow their asthma management plan

- Contact your doctor if you have symptoms such as chest pain, chest tightness, shortness of breath, or severe fatigue

- Keep airways moist by drinking lots of water

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Large area chokes on smoke from Sierra fire
Health officials urge residents downhill of blaze to stay inside.
By Chris Bowman - Bee Staff Writer
Last Updated 12:46 am PDT Tuesday, September 12, 2006

The deeply carved forks of the American River have been delivering more than snowmelt lately down the western slope of the Sierra Nevada. Every morning this past week, the American's three prongs also have ushered thick blankets of smoke from a hard-to-contain wildfire in the Tahoe National Forest to communities downhill, from Foresthill to Folsom. Smoke, like water, rolls quite efficiently downhill through those steep river canyons.

"We have this incredible junction of all these rivers, and they're all acting as funnels for the smoke," said Carol Kennedy, a watershed specialist with the Tahoe National Forest. "They point straight at Auburn. And from there it's just a straight shot down into the valley."

To communities at the end of the smoke chute, it seems as though the blaze is in their neck of the woods. In fact, it's burning 35 miles away and more than 1,000 feet uphill. On Monday -- day seven of the Ralston fire -- the smoke, combined with unhealthy levels of smog, prompted the Folsom Cordova Unified School District to keep students indoors.

The spread of smoke is an interplay of wind, weather, fire and topography, with river canyons playing a strong role. In the evening, as the cold air sinks, it pulls the smoke with it into the river channels and downhill. Come early morning, and as the land warms up, the smoke rises and inundates communities downhill.

"Looking upstream, you could see the white smoke moving down the canyon." The smoke dissipates later as an inversion layer formed by a high pressure system lifts. The cycle repeats itself after sunset. "It comes and goes, and when it comes it's pretty bad."