Meteorologist explains why no-burn days are important to air quality
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Lots of Valley residents like to cozy up by the fire around the holidays. But environmental regulators often have to ask people not to.
That’s because of poor air quality, and not wanting wood-burning fires to add to it. So, will this year be any different?
Matt Pace, meteorologist with the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality, joined The Show to give an update.
MARK BRODIE: Good morning.
MATT PACE: Good morning. Thanks for having me.
BRODIE: Thanks for being here. So, what is the forecast? I mean, are we looking at, are we looking at any, any possibility of being being allowed to have wood burning fires this year?
PACE: Unfortunately, all of this rain is going to clear out of here, and we're gonna see that normal pattern setup where we get the really strong inversion right over the Valley, increase fireplace use. So we are expecting 2.5 to increase. So we have issued a high pollution advisory for Phoenix on Sunday and Monday. And a lot of people do think you always issue on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. But going back to 2016, there were actually three years where we didn't have a high pollution advisory in effect over the holidays because we had a storm system coming through, we had rain to be able to clear all that smoke up. But unfortunately, this year not the case.
BRODIE: Well, so how, how close to, let's say you wanted to not have to issue a no-burn day on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. How close to those days do you need there to be rain to make it possible for people to, to burn fires?
PACE: When you're looking at smoke itself, you need rain to be happening directly on the holiday itself. So this will certainly help with dust. It'll settle all the dust, but with a lot of new emissions of people burning their fireplaces, their fire pits that smoke builds up very quickly because we're talking about that inversion being only 100 or so feet off the ground. So you don't have much room to disperse that smoke. So it builds up extremely quickly. So we would want rain right on the holiday itself.
BRODIE: I mean, rain on the holiday probably makes it a little less palatable to have an outdoor fire pit though.
PACE: Exactly. But what happens is a lot more people will have fireplaces. And then what also happens, especially with the rain that we're having right now is people that may still burn their fireplace or their fire pit, that wood is now wet. So when they do burn it, when it dries out the combustion is not as good. So you get even or smoke associated with this. So this could actually be a pretty bad recipe this year if your wood's not dry and you are still going to burn.
BRODIE: Do you find that when you issue the no-burn days that people generally comply with that? I mean, do, do, do folks tend to get a lot of complaints?
PACE: So first ADEQ issues the high pollution advisories. On top of that Maricopa County then issues the no-burn days. And certainly we do see a lot of social media posts. A lot of people are mad because they do want to burn. But the data also does not lie. People are still certainly burning out there because we do see these values go very, very high. And that's why we do ask people to give the gift of clean air this holiday season by not burning wood, switch to propane or just turn on the television so you can see the fireplace. I know it's not exactly the same. You don't have the crackling of the wood but it's just reducing the emissions. So everyone out there can breathe just a little easier.
BRODIE: Yule log channel again this year. Huh?
PACE: That's right. That's what it's all about.
BRODIE: Well, so in terms of like the, the air quality itself, when you, you know, when you have the, the particulates from the smoke, how, like, how bad is that for us?
PACE: Yeah. So 2.5 is actually one of the worst ones. It's that smallest particle, essentially, it's 20 times smaller than the human hair, and dust is about, you know, five times smaller than the human hair. So what that means is, smoke can go a lot further down into your lungs and can cause more issues. So, if you do have COPD, if you do have asthma, it's gonna make your conditions a lot worse. And we're actually forecasting values to be high enough on Christmas Day into the unhealthy category that everyone may start to feel the effects of smoke around the Valley. And that's why we are recommending to limit your outdoor activity, especially Christmas morning into that mid-morning period.
BRODIE: Is that, is that a result of, of too many fires, or is that a result of a sort of normal activity around the Valley?
PACE: That's the result of normal activity, plus the increase of fireplace use typically on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and then New Year's Eve and New Year's Day, some of the worst air quality that we see around the entire year because of all of the wood burning. And then of course, the fireworks that do take place.
BRODIE: Yeah, I want to ask you about, about the fireworks because we often think about the danger they pose in the summer around July 4 in terms of sparking a wildfire. But it sounds like what you're saying is that they also are not great for air quality this time of year.
PACE: Exactly. Yeah, they're absolutely terrible for air quality this time of year, especially those ground based ones. When we go into New Year's Eve, everyone sets their fireworks typically off en masse, right at the, the New Year. And that is all of the emissions. At the worst possible time when that inversion is the smallest and we typically exceed for the day in the first hour of the day. So we can see very unhealthy, even hazardous air quality on New Year's morning. And you can certainly see that when you leave a location, you can see all of the smoke hanging in the street lights from all of the fireworks and fireplaces out there. So certainly one of our worst air quality days is New Year's Day here in the Valley.
BRODIE: How long does it take all that stuff to clear out? Like, let's assume that there are some number of people on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day who will still light fires even if they're asked not to. How long does it take for, for the that particulate matter to clear out and for the air to, to be less unhealthy.
PACE: It can take quite a while, especially when you're looking at calmer winds. So what you'll see is all of that pollution right down near the surface and then it'll lift out during the afternoon. But watch over the Valley as you go back towards the nighttime hours. If there's no wind to clear it out, it just simply drops back down to the surface and recycles itself back and back and back. So we are still expecting some increased levels on Tuesday. And then obviously the day after New Year's as well, more than likely if we don't have a storm system come through. So you can have those impacts for multiple days. But typically they do get a little less as you move away from the holiday itself.
BRODIE: All right. That is Matt Pace meteorologist with the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality, encouraging us to switch to the yule log channel this year instead of actually burning a fire. Matt, thanks as always and a happy holidays.
PACE: Thank you.
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