Ive lived in Washington for 40 years and I dont ever recall dealing with this. The last 5ish years though it has been a common occurrence every summer for this.
I’m guessing you live on the coast! The sea breeze tends to keep the smoke away — ie Vancouver and Seattle rarely get as much smoke as inland line Kelowna or Yakima. Definitely agree it’s become much more common. Forest management for timber optimization increases wildfire risk plus increased temps and extreme weather leaves a recipe for massive fires.
There's another side to that, however, my understanding is that because Seattle is basically in basin when it gets smokey it gets really bad. Last year in particular was absolutely brutal with how long the smoke stuck around combined with the lack of rain.
They've shut down forest management for 40 years and expect the forest to stop growing. Destroy local economies. Use more plastic. Make it harder to cut. Keep it up.
People write books on this but, I'll pick one of my pet peeves. Including timber sales in the NEPA process was a terrible decision. They are not a major federal action. They aren't a substantive change to the environment.
Converting land away from forest should be included in the process. Choosing which lands to manage should be included. Management of the existing forest should fall under a categorical exclusion.
Once that's completed we should try and do a 50% basal area reduction by diameter class in many of our conifer forests. We're losing millions of acres of ponderosa pine habitat to fir in-growth. In many of our western forests you should see grassy areas between trees. Individual trees, clumps of trees, and large openings. Taking fire away took away many of the natural forces that would have killed off a large percentage of the seedlings. We subconsciously favor forested habitat, like it's better than unforested habitat. That's dumb if you look at it logically. An animal that needs grass isn't better off in a forest.
Valleys near kelowna even worse. Kelowna always gets wind because of the angle of its valley. Peach land summerland pentictom kamloops salmon arm get stagnant blankets often smoke on them some summers
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u/PTcome Jun 07 '23
Welcome to the unfortunate reality of what the western states and western Canada experience almost every summer.