The North St. Paul nightmare goes all night long.
3:30 AM: A faint, smoldering strange smelling smoke lingers in the air from last night's burning. Nobody around us was burning. I don't know who was doing it. But they left whatever they were burning to smolder all night long.
4:30 PM: No smoke. 80 degrees, sunny, with a comfortable humidity level under 50%. It is a beautiful summer evening shaping up and you know it is going to be smoky in North St. Paul. It always is. You will find people burning within a quarter mile of you any day of the week just about.
6:45 PM: No smoke. 76 degrees.
7:15 PM: No smoke. Mostly cloudy at this time.
8:00 PM: No smoke where we live. Others are not so lucky. I found three areas with smoky air. One was smoky from burning grass, another from burning wood, and it was smoky as usual along Silver Lake with the smoke the heaviest near the beach.
9:00 PM: No smoke. The fresh air continues
10:00 PM: Still no smoke.
11:00 PM: No smoke. Off to bed.
There was no wood or yard waste smoke this evening. It was a miracle! The air was wonderfully fresh all evening and all night. The temperature dropped quickly this evening. We took advantage of the very rare fresh air in North St. Paul to use a fan to cool the house before bed. The air was fresh when we went to bed and still fresh after midnight so I opened a few windows feeling confident there would be no burning tonight. Late night burning is not as prevalent this year as it was in 2008 and 2009, but it happens every now and then. There is nothing worse than waking up in the middle of the night to a house full of wood smoke.