I grew up in the mountains, away from any large cities, and so smog was something I only heard about.
I knew it was bad. I knew it was in the atmosphere over cities. I knew it was caused by pollution.
But I didn’t know that you could see it.
I found out otherwise when I moved to San Diego and noticed a certain haze that appeared on some days. Someone then identified it for me: That’s smog.
I had no idea.
California take extensive measures to try to cut down on smog. You have to get your car checked on a regular basis to see whether it meets the state’s automotive emissions guidelines (or they won’t renew your license tag). There are ads for "Smog Check"s at virtually all of the filling stations that aren’t tied to a convenience store.
Apparently the smog is much better these days than it was back in the 1970s. It’s also better in San Diego than it is in Los Angeles.
But lately it’s been really bad where I live, in El Cajon (on the outskirts of San Diego). It’s not as bad as in the picture above (that’s of a Moscow rush hour), but it’s bad enough that I can’t see the hills the way I’m supposed to be able to. There’s a haze between me and the hills, and there’s so much haze between me and the most distant hills that I can barely make them out.
It’s not normally this bad, but it’s no fun for allergy sufferers with all that particulate matter in the air.
While I was researching this subject I found a government-run web site that contains air quality forecasts and maps for the whole country.
Yesterday we had an unexpected set of thunderstorms (rare phenomena here in SoCal), which washed a lot of it out of the air, so we had a better day today. The previous couple of weeks, though, the haze was really bad.
Like the day I drove out to the Salton Sea.
It was interesting to note that as soon as I got out of El Cajon and drove up in the mountains to Alpine (15 miles away and about 1500 feet higher above sea level), all the smog had vanished and you could see the hills clear as a bell, no matter how far away they were.
More on the trip later.
