Revised Los Angeles Air Quality Index
Breathing is for suckers anyway.
2025 is off to a raging start here in Los Angeles, and I mean that quite literally.
While my house is not technically located in a wildfire evacuation zone, the word “technically” holds a lot of weight in that sentence. After losing power Tuesday night, we spent Wednesday at a friend’s house and decided to get an Airbnb far from the flames for the night.
I’m writing this Thursday afternoon, grateful to be back home and relatively safe. The winds driving Tuesday and Wednesday’s destruction seem to have died down. Thankfully, that means that while thousands have lost homes or businesses, most of us are lucky enough that by this weekend, the main obstacle to normal life lives will be breathing air that smells like a bag of charcoal briquettes.
To be frank, we’re getting used to that part. Dust and smog give Los Angeles a subterranean air quality baseline, which, of course, gets worse during wildfire season—particularly since new wildfire seasons seem to pop up more frequently than Bachelor spin-offs. It all makes the EPA’s normal air quality index ineffective enough that I decided to do a quick regional update:
Stay safe out there, Angelenos.
Leave it to LA to find a way to get your daily dose of minerals in one breath.
(So glad you're safe, friend. Hope that power is back on soon!)
Greg, as I'm sure your Da has told you repeatedly, when we were kids and would drive into LA from Tucson to see the cousins, the end of the long tedious trip was joyfully marked by watering and a burning sensation in our eyes. Yay, we're almost there! But back then it meant everything you're experiencing now plus LEAD...☠️. Seriously though, glad to hear you're safe and sound, please stay that way.