My heart goes out to all of my fellow western united States residents dealing with the concerns and fear due to unknowns and unsubstantiated conspiracies circulating on the internet, and some experiencing the loss of homes and life due to the unprecedented wildfires.

I wanted to thank those that read my previous post about the fires including one that was 1.5 miles from my own home and several sending private offers of assistance and a place to stay if evacuated. Thank you. The evacuation preparation orders for my home have been removed due to some weather changes and hopefully this allows for the hard working heroic firefighters to contain the wildfires. 

There is still a great deal of smoke and one day we were off the AQi scale with a 613 quality making us the worst in the entire world due to the smoke and particulates. At times it smelled so thick of smoke that it was like a fireplace in my house was burning but the chimney damper was closed. I couldn’t even see across the street to my neighbors home which is less than 100 feet. We are now at 224 AQi which is far better than we were, but still very unhealthy air.

We are hoping that rain predicted for Thursday arrives and suppresses the fires and clears the air. It has ben challenging trying to focus on work when worried of the unknown of my friends, community, and myself losing their home and all of this on top of COVID-19. I hope everyone is safe and finds the iner strength to get through all of this, and we again see each other.

Thank you,
Shaan

Some interesting and helpful links:

State of Oregon Fires and Hotspots Dashboard
https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/6329d5e4e13748b9b9f7f33f06a3c376/

Zoom Earth:  watch near real-time satellite images of the smoke from the fires or even watch hurricane Sally.
https://zoom.earth/#view=40.12,-116.59,6z/date=2020-09-16,08:10,-7

Caltopo maps with fire overlays and more
https://caltopo.com/map.html

Air Quality Now:
https://www.airnow.gov/?city=Portland&state=OR&country=USA

Earth::  A real-time hypnotizing view of winds.
https://earth.nullschool.net/