LAKE COUNTY ? Revelers were out in the sunshine and still-hazy air at Library Park Friday, awaiting the Lakeport Regional Chamber of Commerce”s annual fireworks display over Clear Lake.
Conditions were markedly better than last week, when the smoke from wildfires in and around Lake County whited out the county”s mountainous horizon. Levels of allowable pollutants were recorded between 155 to 223 percent more than the state standard, in a June 24 report.
“Lake County”s air has greatly improved from the heavy smoke of last week, starting with a weather change on Saturday afternoon continuing through today,” Lake County Air Pollution Control Officer Bob Reynolds said Thursday.
While blue skies still turn to brown close to the horizon, which is still shrouded with haze, Reynolds said pollutant levels Thursday were less than the allowable state and federal levels, reaching “70 percent of any air standard limit.”
The air falls in the “good” to “moderate” ranges on the Federal Air Quality Index (AQI), according to Reynolds. The AQI rates air quality in six stages ranging from “good” to “hazardous,” with an AQI number for “good” being between zero and 50, and a number for “moderate being between 51 and 100. To be categorized as “hazardous,” a region”s AQI number would be between 301 and 500.
Lake County”s highest AQI for particulate matter as of Thursday was 70, with a health warning for sensitive individuals starting at 101, according to Reynolds.
As of 3 p.m. Thursday, Lake County”s air pollutant levels were at 13 to 48 percent of the federal standard and 39 percent of the state standard, according to Reynolds.
Revelers at Library Park and elsewhere have a southwest wind to thank for the improved conditions, according to Reynolds, which moved in Saturday and cleared much of the smoke out of the Lake County Air Basin. The prevailing wind is a west to northwest wind, which brought smoke from more than 100 wildfires caused by lightning starting June 20 in Mendocino County.
The Mendocino Lightning Complex, as CAL Fire named it, had burned 39,700 acres and was 45 percent contained as of a 6 p.m. update on Friday. Reynolds said that fire and wildfires in the Mendocino National Forest, as well as numerous other Northern California wildfires, will continue to pour smoke into Lake County”s air basin with west to northwest winds until the fires are out.
According to the CAL Fire Web site, www.fire.ca.gov, nearly 80 percent of the total 1,781 fires statewide were contained when information was updated at 9 a.m. Friday. Statewide, 520,831 acres were reported burned.
Contact Tiffany Revelle at trevelle@record-bee.com.
