Pittsburgh's air quality considered "unhealthy for everyone" on Friday due to wildfire smoke

The air quality will remain poor today. Officially, the air quality will be in the "very unhealthy" to "hazardous" range. 

How hazardous are things? Wildfire smoke, like what we are dealing with today, really gives you a double whammy when it comes to impacting your health. The first is that you may notice when talking about air quality that we label it with a number, and then we put behind it PM2.5 or maybe 10. 

The 2.5 is important because it is talking about the size of the particles that we are describing as parts per million. The unit for 2.5 is microns. 1 micron is the same as 0.00003937 inches or 0.001 mm. So 2.5 microns is around a fourth the width of a single wool fiber or around 1/7th the width of a human hair. It's tiny and grating. 

It's small enough to get deep into your lungs but hard enough to irritate, like very fine sandpaper. For those with respiratory issues already in place, this increased irritation causes shortness of breath and frequent coughing spells. Not good.

The long-term impact comes from the chemicals in the smoke, mainly benzene and formaldehyde. Both of these are chemicals you do not want to breathe in, and both are carcinogens. These two chemicals are always around when it comes to fires, but due to their relative lightness, they don't mix out like other chemicals whose smell you recognize as being more in line with outside fires.

The good news is that our air quality will rapidly improve overnight, with us returning to more normal air quality on Saturday morning. The bad news is that another plume of smoke is expected to roll in on Sunday, but that plume is not expected to be as bad as this current one. 

Getting to today's forecast, it is going to be hot with highs in the mid-80s today. There will be a haze sitting over the city all day long. I have noon temperatures near 80 degrees with light winds of around 5 mph.

While air quality will briefly improve on Saturday, strong storms are expected for the afternoon and evening, with winds being the main concern. Tornadoes also can't be ruled out. 

Storms will also bring frequent lightning and downpours. Saturday highs will hit the mid to low 80s. I also have Sunday's high in the mid-80s.