12:30 AM: Light odor of burnt wood lingers in the air.
7:00 AM: The air smells faintly like burnt wood. The air does not smell good. At 7 AM the air is still not fresh.
There was no wood smoke this evening where I live. Only wonderful fresh air! The reason there was no horrible wood smoke this evening was because of the rain. Rain clouds moved in by late afternoon. Drizzle started to fall around 7:30 PM and ended after an hour. It was 80 degrees at 6 PM. Had it not been for the rain, this day most likely would have been a miserable, smoky hell like most are in the this city.
Sundays are one of the smokiest days of the week. You would think that Fridays or Saturdays would be the smokiest, but there is no day of rest when it comes to unnecessary air pollution in North St. Paul, MN. The small proportion of recreational burners can't take a break when it comes to destroying our quality of life.
This was the first day in the last five days without wood smoke pollution. We had smoky air the prior four days. Out of the past 8 days, we had only 2 without wood smoke for a total of 6 days with polluted air. Of those 8 days, 2 of them were not suitable for recreational burning. Tuesday the 26th was cool and damp. This day had rain in the evening. If the weather was nicer, you can bet these two days would have been smoky as well.
It should be evident that the air in this city is polluted a majority of the time. If the weather is nice, the air will be smoky nearly 100% of the evenings. Only rain and extremely cool or hot temperatures can save us from smoky air in North St. Paul.