jeromeoneil

Ash falling out of the sky, blood red sun, shadowed out moon, smoke filled air, and everything is either on fire or about to be on fire.

I rode in anyway. If it's gonna be the apocalypse, I'm at least going out entertained.

Seattle Forrest

This fresh hell is from Jolly Mountain, in Salmon la Sac near Roslyn and Cle Elum.

I drove my bike up to Snoqualmie Pass yesterday, and turned promptly around because the air quality was too bad to be in an air-conditioned car. I rode in North Bend and went home. Around noon, the smoke was staying above ~2,500 feet, but it’s come down, and the forecast is for “atmospheric mixing” meaning this stuff in our lungs.

I know it isn’t politically correct to say this but the first thing that came to mind when I saw the ash this morning was the scene from Schindler’s List.

The entire town of Roslyn is under a L3 evacuation order, thousands of people are being displaced from their homes.

It hasn’t rained for months on the east side, it’s powder keg dry.

Mazama, Lost River, and Rendezvous are under L1 evacuation orders.

This is so ****ed up.

aRoudy1

Just to stop false information from spreading: Roslyn and Ronald are in Level 2 evacuation (Be ready to leave); the area north of Ronald (to include Salmon La Sac) is Level 3 (Get out!). I'm in Cle Elum and we're in Level 1 (Warning).

Seattle Forrest

Thanks for the update, @aRoudy1.

My info came from Sunday's Spokesman Review, I'm glad to be wrong about this.

On Saturday, about 4,000 residents, including the entire town of Roslyn, were under evacuation orders to either leave immediately or be ready to leave at a moment’s notice. Nearly 1,000 residences have been evacuated under level 3 – the most urgent level – and about 1,200 are under level 2 notices.

Jolly Mountain fire: Over 1,000 evacuated; Inslee declares state of emergency | The Spokesman-Review

aRoudy1

I've edited my post to show the difference in evacuation levels. Seems like the Spokesman Review just lumped them together.

Seattle Forrest

I think maybe nobody outside the immediate area knows what's going on. There's a palpable sense of despair.

jeromeoneil

It's creepy as hell. I grew up in Enumclaw so fire crews were a regular thing. I've never seen anything like this before.

scotch

Friends who live just south of Eagle Creek saying the air is terrible.

B. Carfree

A bit more than just south of Eagle Creek we've been hunting for air for weeks. Nothing like PM 2.5 levels over 400 ug/m^3 to really make your day (if you consider sitting indoors with air filters going full blast a good time, that is).

Just my luck. I was finally getting into decent shape after the worst year ever in 2016 (opened with pneumonia, closed with near-deadly bronchitis and involved a bunch of non-riding months because of out-of-state family needs). Then I had a two-month series of business trips that really curtailed my riding, followed by a visit from an old friend in the form of a detached piece of cartilage moving into a painful spot in my knee, which of course only gets better if I ride lots of hard miles. It's kind of hard to ride those miles when doing so would cause severe damage to everything from the lungs to the heart, vasculature and brain.

I'm so ready for rain I could cry. Thankfully, we may get some this week.

Seattle Forrest

Holy crap. Sorry to hear about what you've been going through, @B. Carfree. This must be even worse for you than for many of us. Which is hard to imagine, this is just oppressive and horrible.

It's dark in the daytime, and I can't see the horizon, hills nearby that would be making up the skyline, that I know are there, are just gone. It's like trying to see into murky water.

woodway

I have a house east of Cle Elum, live there on weekends, live in the Bellevue area during the week. Over Labor Day the air quality in Cle Elum got progressively worse to the point where I felt it was worse than I had ever seen in in some of the 2nd and 3rd tier cities in China (really, really bad). I rode my bike to work today and nobody could believe I would be out in the "bad air". Compared to what I had been breathing in Cle Elum, the air seemed pristine.

jeromeoneil

I rode in today, too. My lungs definitely are feeling it.

I guess everyone has to die of something.

Rider51

Tried riding a week ago in Rainier National Park. The air quality was bad, and we never saw the mountain at all, from anywhere. We rode up Cayuse Pass, right before they closed it. Two other riders were coming up behind us, hopefully they weren't planning on going over.

I flew over Oregon just yesterday, and the entire Central-Southern Cascades to as far as the eye could see west was just choked with smoke. I took some pictures, and will try to share them later.

I was able to ride in the Three Capes area in Oregon on Monday in nice, marine air.

Wherever you ride, make sure you keep an eye on weather, and wind direction. The odds of you getting caught in a forest fire are almost nothing, but in some areas the smoke and haze is quite bad, making breathing very difficult, if not hazardous. You don't want to be riding in a marginal area, and have the wind shift on you.

The only thing that's really going to fully clear this out is a good, old-fashioned Pineapple Express weather system with drenching rain. That may not happen until October, or later.