Without an incoming storm to clear out pollution, an inversion layer will get trapped under warmer air above it to create a blanket of haze through at least the weekend, the National Weather Service predicts.
“It will sit there and accumulate for days at a time until a weather pattern comes through and removes the inversion, and then the valley can clean out,” says Bo Call, Utah Division of Environmental Quality air monitoring manager. “The Heber Valley is susceptible to that just like every other valley that we’ve got where there are mountains and air can get trapped under them.”
The pollution comes from many sources, from people using cars and fireplaces to industry, and even cows.
“It’s kind of a non-scientific way to look at it,” Call says, “but a weaker inversion, to me, means that the warm air mass is higher up, and so you have more space between the bottom of this air mass that’s trapping everything and the ground, and if you have a stronger inversion, then that’s quite a bit lower, and so you have a lot less air mass to deal with. Fortunately, this current inversion is fairly weak, so we do get some warming in the morning. The sun comes out, you get a little bit of mixing where the levels are not getting really high really quickly, but they are still there, and you are going to get that haze.”
Other factors include lack of snow on the ground - a silver lining of the dry spell of the past month in the valley.
“When you have a lot of snow on the ground, it tends to insulate things, so you keep the colder temperatures, and then there’s interaction with the sunlight bouncing off the snow,” Call says. “If it’s warmer and there’s less snow on the ground, that tends to moderate the effects of the inversion.”
With the haze sticking around, some may find it uncomfortable to breathe this week, while others may not notice any difference.
“First and foremost,” Call says, “I would say that people need to listen to their bodies. If your body tells you that you’re feeling something, then you might want to look at doing different activities. It’s not a good time to run a marathon, but if you can get up and out of the inversion, going to the ski slopes and stuff that are up and above it, then that’s good, the air’s clear up there.”
Until the next storm clears out the smoggy air, reducing pollution like car and wooden fireplace use can help keep the skies clear. He says humans going about their daily lives are the primary contributors - while industry also accounts for a large chunk of pollution, he says that actually has only about a third of the impact of car exhaust.
Unlike places like the Salt Lake Valley, meteorologists predict smoke in the Heber Valley based on human presence and timing of storms. The Division of Environmental Quality is seeking to add equipment for measuring real-time pollution levels in the Heber Valley, as well as in Summit County. Call says that’ll happen when the department can afford it, and his office has recommended that funding to the governor.
For more on air quality in Utah, visit deq.utah.gov.
