The Bay Area's air district has now issued air quality advisories for all but nine days this August.
After the first two Spare the Air Alerts of the year were issued last week before a brief respite on Sunday, the Bay Area on Monday was back under an air quality advisory as wildfires continue to burn in Northern California.
The Bay Area Air Quality Management District issued an advisory into Tuesday, expecting lofted smoke to once again cause hazy and smoky skies throughout the region. A Spare the Air Alert was not issued, with no parts of the Bay Area experiencing unhealthy air quality.
"After the next two days, it looks like a lot of that smoke is going to be clearing out," National Weather Service Meteorologist Jeff Lorber told KCBS Radio's Rebecca Corral in an interview Monday morning.
"So, hopefully air quality should improve by then."
The Bay Area has been under an air quality advisory for nearly two-thirds of the month so far.
Including Tuesday, the district this month has issued 15 air quality advisories, including all but two days since Aug. 12 (Aug. 17 and Aug. 22). Last week's Spare the Air Alerts were the first two of the year due to fine particulate matter, a far cry from the 46 the Bay Area experienced in 2020. Thirty consecutive Spare the Air Alerts were called last August and September, as California experienced its worst-ever fire season.
The still-burning Caldor and Dixie Fires are only 5% and 40% contained, respectively, combining to char over 830,000 acres so far.
"As those fires become more contained, they're (emitting) less smoke," Lorber explained. "And we have these continuous onshore winds, both at the surface and at the upper levels of the atmosphere, which will continue to clear out the smoke that’s currently over the ocean, which is thinning by the day. So, (that means) cleaner air and better air quality for people around the Bay Area."
So, will the Bay Area just have to get used to air quality advisories if wildfires continue to burn into September and October? Lorber said that will depend on weather patterns over the next couple of months.
Lower temperatures and more humidity slowed the wildfires’ spread overnight into Monday, and the opposite tends to lead to more smoke.
"It could be a cyclical pattern," Lorber said. "Once we enter periods of warming and drying, and fire spread increases, more smoke emanates from the wildfires, and then the winds blow it over the ocean and over the Bay Area, more directly from the Northern California wildfires into the area."
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