BOISE, Idaho — We're getting a brief reprieve from the dense smoke and lower air quality. But, it will continue to remain an issue as large fires are still burning across the region.
The past few years have been hit or miss with some of the denser wildfire smoke. Last year, southern Idaho got a bit of a break from the denser smoke while 2021 saw many days with smoke in the air.
The Idaho Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) said there's no discernable trend in wildfire smoke severity or frequency in the past 5-10 years.
Mike Toole is the Regional Airshed Coordinator. He said looking at the data, "It's a rollercoaster."
"Every summer, even though it's wildfire season, it seems to be different. If you took each year and took a screen grab of what happened, especially in July and August, it's kind of a rollercoaster," detailed Toole. He continued, "Depending on the summer, we could have one to two week events. And we can have some summers where we see a couple days and then we're fine and then a couple more days."
The metric used to measure air quality is called the air quality index or AQI. DEQ will take the 24 hour average to summarize the data on a given day. In general, Toole said when we have wildfire smoke, the AQI averages out to be moderate (yellow) for the day.
Toole explained, "Predominantly over the past decade, (we've seen) yellow. We've had some orange days (unhealthy for some sensitive groups), and a red (unhealthy) here and there. Last summer in July and the summer before that, we had a bunch of yellows but maybe one or two oranges. We had a little big of impacts later in August."
Toole also mentioned the past two weeks "we were just getting hammered" from the smoke of wildfires burning in Easter Oregon. He added the concentrations during that time frame added up to be the most significant smoke impact we've seen in the Treasure Valley in the past 5-10 years. At times, last week Treasure Valley air quality monitors showed the air was "very unhealthy" (purple).
While we are enjoying an improvement in air quality at the moment, Toole added there are numerous wildfires burning right now in California, Oregon, Washington and Canada. So, depending on which way the wind blows, we have a lot of sources we can get smoke from.
Right now, Toole said his days are busier with the lowered air quality. There's an increased focus on interagency communication and additional phone calls and emails to help keep the public informed and safe.