Air quality is and has been extremely bad for the last three days or so. We had a historic wind storm on Monday/Tuesday with gusts up to 60-70 mph. That, combined with dry forests and some already burning fires were a recipe for disaster. As an example, the Beachie Creek Fire which started Aug 16th or so was about 450 acres on the 7th. It grew to 131,000 acres during the windstorm.
Thankfully, I'm in the NW part of the Portland Metro area so I haven't been affected by the Riverside fire burning into the SE metro area, but my GF's mom is right on the edge of the stage 2 evacuation alert. Though, crews have been able to slow forward progress on that fire and the winds have died down so she should be safe. This really bad air quality for us is supposed to last until at least Monday, but I'm betting it will be a few weeks before we get down to green levels. Some of the smoke has traveled 1500 miles into the Pacific so far.
Current AQ map:
