U.S. Air Quality

Weekend Edition: Code orange overnight in Oklahoma and fires in Kansas/OK

Not too much happening on the air quality front in the US. Overnight hours Friday-Saturday saw a brief code orange AQI levels on the Oklahoma/Kansas border. Saturday's HMS fire counts show a large blotch of burning in the agricultural areas of Kansas and Oklahoma and the events could be linked. At the same time, Central America and Mexico is on fire again as forests and fields are being cleared by burning. This will likely impact the US over the next month or so.

And in a nice image that shows that Spring has come, the ice is starting to break up on Lake Superior.

Update: March 30, 2014 20:00 EDT

Air quality worsened on Sunday with elevated PM_2.5 in Nebraska, South Carolina and Minnesota. The PM levels exceeded 80 µg m^-3 at two sites in Nebraska and was well above 100 µg m^-3 called LLCHD (Lincoln-Lancaster County Health Department). There is no news on the Nebraska Air Quality page to explain these levels. Unfortunately, the whole state is under cloud cover so we can see little from space.

Posted by Ray Hoff at March 29, 2014 9:38 PM