WA wood heating/smoke/asthma (Shelton, Spokane, Newport)

[bobcatpossum]

I wonder if there's a simple way to check natural gas availability for any WA location?

[west seattle gal]

Originally Posted by bobcatpossum

This is why I'm asking about the actual "atmosphere" in these areas...

The place where I had to let go a house...could see thick black smoke creeping along the street level towards my house, from neighbors chimney on the inversion days, or, could try to walk but be hit with such smell of burning plastic that could only hope to make it back to the house without passing out (there was not even a way to tell where it was coming from)...in general, it was very bad.

I've never seen this in my neighborhood/town, Bellingham. The air is really clean here. Isn't this true of most of the PNW? I never encountered this in Seattle, either.

[bobcatpossum]

Originally Posted by west seattle gal

I've never seen this in my neighborhood/town, Bellingham. The air is really clean here. Isn't this true of most of the PNW? I never encountered this in Seattle, either.

These areas probably have natural gas heaters. I'm seeking info on more rural and semi-rural areas, Shelton area, Pend O'Reille/Newport, Raymond.

[Diana Holbrook]

SW WA here. We do have a lot of wood heat here, but we also have very engaged clean air authorities who issue air stagnation alerts when the air is starting to deteriorate. In winter, we have a few long calm spells where it's an issue and they will call burn bans, other times, the weather systems keep us pretty clean.

If you never want to be downwind, then try a coastal town. The further West you are, the fewer chimneys blowing your direction.

Your story about the smoke filling the street... sounds like a local air circulation issue, and perhaps just a poor boy scout if the fire had that much smoke or burned plastic smell. That's just not good fire skills/etiquette.

[bobcatpossum1]

Originally Posted by Diana Holbrook

SW WA here. We do have a lot of wood heat here, but we also have very engaged clean air authorities who issue air stagnation alerts when the air is starting to deteriorate. In winter, we have a few long calm spells where it's an issue and they will call burn bans, other times, the weather systems keep us pretty clean.

If you never want to be downwind, then try a coastal town. The further West you are, the fewer chimneys blowing your direction.

Your story about the smoke filling the street... sounds like a local air circulation issue, and perhaps just a poor boy scout if the fire had that much smoke or burned plastic smell. That's just not good fire skills/etiquette.

This was in a little Sierra Nevada town....this is quite common for these towns, all over Sierra (except Tahoe area); it's just in more affluent communities they don't burn trash a lot.
(I'd much rather be in the mountains/in-land than by the ocean)

[xani]

I'm the original author of this thread. Ever since I had a chance to test out smoke situation near the end of Olympic Penninsula (rural, the closest city is Shelton): not smoky at at all and air is super clean, zero issues for my asthma. Occasionally, some neighbor would burn (even would burn trash), but luckily this seems to be happening rarely and I can always close the window. I guess a lot of people have natural gas or use electricity to heat (and latter is not too expensive, I think). On the down side, as a migraine sufferer, I had experienced such increase in migraines ever since rains had started that I will have to leave the state and write off entire Washington / move back South, as I'm pretty sure these coastal atmospheric fronts go all over the place.
I also had a chance to spend time around Newport area (in summer), and was told by locals that it does get smoky (was in a medium size lots area, mostly 5 acres, but I guess it still gets smoky despite low housing density.