i live in auburn (AL - not sweet auburn), and everything was fine until last night around 10 CST. then the smoke blew in, and damn - it was as though there were a pretty major fire burning just a couple of miles away. not just the visible haze - the very distinct smoky smell, too. i got curious and drove around southeast GA all night last night, and it seemed to be a little bit better in columbus. further south and east, though - lumpkin, cusseta, dawson, albany, blakely - it was very thick.
it wasn't until i drove the CA central valley for the first time that i realized what a daily quality-of-life issue airborne pollution really is - i had always thought smog was just a talking point - the thing that CA types love to hate, etc. - but then i drove CA 99 from barstow to modesto. even in the agricultural central valley, 100 miles from fresno; 200 from L.A., etc., the smog never left me. oddly, you can drive I-5, which parallells the central valley on a high ridge to the west, and completely miss the smog, even though you can still see all the distant towns you pass through on smoggy CA 99.
if the amount of smoke in atlanta rivals what i saw in auburn and south GA last night, i hate to think what that must be like, coupled with the ever-present urban environmental factors. it's just so damn strange that the smoke has been so concentrated that, at one time or another, everyone from miami to tallahassee to birmingham to brasstown bald has seen and breathed the smoke from this fire. unlike CA smog or smoky mountain pollution, the smoke seems to have spread irrespective of the local topography. the weather channel even reported smoke as far away as new orleans - hard to believe. hope the schizo winds start blowing SW-to-NE again soon.
better yet, i hope the fire ends (duh).
Edited by convulso, 23 May 2007 - 08:39 AM.