Photos show Yosemite National Park choked by wildfire smoke
The burning forest just outside of Yosemite National Park in California has choked the air inside the park's iconic valley marked by imposing granite walls that stretch hundreds of feet into the polluted sky.
The West's fire season is now well underway, and it has been further stoked by heat waves and especially parched land. As a result of the now over 36,000-acre Ferguson fire, Yosemite -- one of the most heavily-visited national parks in the country -- has been inundated with tiny bits of particulate pollution, covering the park in a thick haze.
As of Tuesday afternoon, the U.S. Forest Service assigned the Yosemite valley an "Unhealthy" air quality rating, meaning that everyone should reduce time outside, and people who are especially sensitive to this kind of pollution should avoid prolonged exposure.
“I’ve never seen numbers this high, and I’ve been doing this for 30 years,” Dave Conway, deputy officer for the Mariposa County Air Pollution Control District, told San Jose's The Mercury News.
Breathing this particle-laden air over time has been repeatedly tied to heart and lung diseases, particularly the accelerated hardening of plaque inside the walls of blood vessels.
Although the park's visitor center remains open, Yosemite's site says that "smoke may be heavy at times," and to "expect poor air quality & visibility."
A webcam maintained by the Yosemite Conservancy shows live views of the smoke-choked valley as the fires continue to rage.
California has already experienced a busy fire season, as large fires returned to California's wine country in early July.
This follows on the heels of 2017's terrible season -- the state's worst fire year on record -- which burned 1.2 million acres of land, an area the size of Delaware.
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This included December's destructive Thomas Fire, which burned less than 70 miles from Los Angeles. It proved to be the largest fire in California's history, burning an area nearly the size of sprawling Los Angeles itself.
Since the early 1980s -- when more reliable, modern record keeping began -- the Forest Service notes that the amount of land that burns each year has generally doubled.
Mismanaged forests and irresponsible behavior in fire country are both to blame, but every fire today is further enhanced by climate change-boosted temperatures, which parch Western land, turning it to tinder.
Mark was the science editor at Mashable. After working as a ranger with the National Park Service, he started a reporting career after seeing the extraordinary value in educating people about the happenings on Earth, and beyond.
He's descended 2,500 feet into the ocean depths in search of the sixgill shark, ventured into the halls of top R&D laboratories, and interviewed some of the most fascinating scientists in the world.
