Smoke report

[radiantfracture]

A bright orange sun this morning, so damped down by the smoke that I could look directly at it without pain and without printing dazzled shapes on my eye. The shadows are blue-green -- the whole world seems luridly and childishly painted in orange and turquoise.

I can't imagine what it's like where the fires are. Well, I can go look at pictures. That would help me imagine. (Goes and looks at pictures.) Jesus.

We're hundreds of kilometers away, but I can taste ash today, and the air is syrupy, yet full of prickly heat. S. said "I feel like I'm walking in the location of an indoor heated pool," and I suggested it was like wading through warm custard. I'll amend. Warm custard full of pins. I had plans to go to yoga and the community market, but this clammy needling heat defeats me.

I'm told (by minim_calibre, for one) that the smoke has drifted as far as Seattle.

This is -- you know -- really something.

Here's A CBC article with this cheerful subhead: "Kamloops, B.C., saw an air quality health risk rating of 18 — on a scale that normally stops at 10." But (the article continues) it was worse in Williams Lake, where it got up to 36/10 a couple of weeks ago.

(We're going to need a bigger scale.)

The air quality is sitting at a paltry 6 here, so I had better stop being so dramatic.

{rf}

Comments

[intertext]

I didn't take pictures - I only had my iPhone with me, and tend to be a bit reluctant to take pics out of a plane window. I'm kind of sorry though. The scale of it really hit me - you know, seeing pics from the ground is bad enough, but when you see this billow of smoke going on and on for kms, it is shocking and frightening.