Pittsburgh’s air quality considered “unhealthy for everyone” on Friday due to wildfire smoke

The air quality will remain poor today. Officially, the air quality will be in the “very unhealthy” to “hazardous” range. 

Friday’s forecast and air quality warnings

How hazardous are things? Wildfire smoke, like what we are dealing with today, really gives you a double whammy when it comes to impacting your health. The first is that you may notice when talking about air quality that we label it with a number, and then we put behind it PM2.5 or maybe 10. 

The 2.5 is important because it is talking about the size of the particles that we are describing as parts per million. The unit for 2.5 is microns. 1 micron is the same as 0.00003937 inches or 0.001 mm. So 2.5 microns is around a fourth the width of a single wool fiber or around 1/7th the width of a human hair. It’s tiny and grating. 

It’s small enough to get deep into your lungs but hard enough to irritate, like very fine sandpaper. For those with respiratory issues already in place, this increased irritation causes shortness of breath and frequent coughing spells. Not good.

The good news is that our air quality will rapidly improve overnight, with us returning to more normal air quality on Saturday morning. The bad news is that another plume of smoke is expected to roll in on Sunday, but that plume is not expected to be as bad as this current one. 

Getting to today’s forecast, it is going to be hot with highs in the mid-80s today. There will be a haze sitting over the city all day long. I have noon temperatures near 80 degrees with light winds of around 5 mph.

Kennywood and Sandcastle close due to air quality

Both Kennywood and Sandcastle announced on Friday morning that the parks will be closed due to the air quality alert issued by the Pa. Department of Environmental Protection. 

According to both parks, patrons who purchased tickets for July 17 will be valid on one operating day throughout the rest of the season.