As someone from the Western US, we regularly have a few days each year with with AQI well above what is currently present in NYC and Washington DC,
Days with an AQI of 400 almost always happen every year and we basically just run air purifiers and try and stay inside and it doesn’t make national news.
So is it just because the Eastern US doesn’t have nearly as many wildfires as we do out west and so consequently deals with a lot less smoke?
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It’s news because of the rarity, is my guess.
Because we’re used to our part of the country not being on fire. So getting smoke is a weird anomaly
Even here on the West Coast, at least where I’m at, it’s noticeably worse in recent years than anyone ever remembers it being.
But yeah, I think it’s because the East Coast has never experienced something quite like this before. I suppose it’s like if a hurricane hit California or a blizzard hit Seattle.
Because it is uncommon.
Imagine if you got a nor’easter out west or a hurricane.
This is just a rare event so everyone is talking about it.
If a hurricane got anywhere close to the West Coast, it would be big news. This is a type of natural disaster that is uncommon for our area and people are not used to dealing with. Many people don’t even have air purifiers and those that do run them all the time anyway so the air is still worse for them. The idea of having to stay inside for fresh air is a foreign concept, especially to people like me with indoor allergies. That’s why it is news.
Coz their delicate East Coast lungs can’t handle the smoke! We here in the west welcome it with open arms and even opener alveoli!
Edit: I’m not being serious lol
Same reason you’d freak out about a hurricane or a tornado its all about what your used too and the Eastern US isn’t used to smoke from wildfires. So Obiviously they gonna freak out.
Also this whole thing kinda reminds me when we get snow down South and people up in the North will smugly mock our pitiful baby snow. lol
We’re not used to it, many of us weren’t prepared for it. It’s kind of like when it snowed in Texas in a less drastic way. Here in Virginia we’re adapted to mostly clean air and there’s a huge culture of being outdoors, all the houses have big porches and yards and a lot of people bike to commute. The only reason I have an air purifier is because I have pets so I like to do what I can to keep the air clean of pet dander and debris. Most people don’t. It’s extremely jarring for us to go outside in the haze, i can feel my lungs hurting. It kinda smells like old cigs in my car when I turn the ac on right now. Also, most of us had no idea what was going on until like day 2 of smog city.
There’s also the fact that this is impacting a place like Virginia all the way from Canada. The amount of smoke spread is truly unprecedented
Because it’s not something that we’re used to dealing with. The idea of the air outside being unhealthy to breathe is just unheard of on the east coast.
Disagree. I’ve lived all around the West and I haven’t experienced quite what the Northeast is right now. Not to say that it doesn’t happen out here, but I’ve never experienced that blanket of orange that they’re living under at the moment.
Because its very rare (but not unprecedented) and we live in a media saturated age, so combine those two facts and you get an unparalleled coverage and fret.
The fact that your state is so regularly on fire that you’re numb to it is an interesting source of curmudgeonliness.
But the comparison would be snow in Texas. The conditions weren’t worse than winters here, but a) rarely happens in Texas b) is indicative of climate change yielding more severe weather c) infrastructure didn’t prepare for it so it was more of a crisis. That was especially true for TX because if its dumb isolationist relationship to the power grid or whatever. But now in NY, probably a lot of people don’t have air purifiers to run in the first place.
Anyway, New York is also extremely populous and a source of a lot of entertainment and publication, so you’ll hear about anything that happens there more than everywhere else.
Because 10000000s of people experienced smoky air for possibly the first time in their lives, and it was so bad that it actually beat New Delhi to have the worst air in THE WORLD. The east is outright wet compared to most of the west, and our population reflects that. If there are forest fires in such a wet area, something must be seriously fucked. You had tens of millions of people panicking about something they have never experienced before.
Just stop. You all post pics every time California has the orange skies, too.
The fact that people online have been arguing about who experiences environmental disasters worse is honestly so depressing.
Why are media sources like the New York Times covering something happening in New York? Hmm I wonder……
Also west coast wildfires are definitely national news
>the Western US
>
>we regularly have a few days each year with with AQI well above what is currently present in NYC and Washington DC
Y’all do. We don’t.
>is it just because the Eastern US doesn’t have nearly as many wildfires as we do out west and so consequently deals with a lot less smoke?
Pretty much.
It’s unusual. Kind of like a foot of snow being dumped on a city in the northeast vs any of the coastal Pacific cities. You might hear about the snow out east if it’s a slow news day. If San Francisco ever got a foot of snow? It’d be national news regardless of what else was going on.
Western wildfires do make national news, but they’re also common enough that it’s never shocking unless it spreads and burns down a city.
I hate how we’ve gotten used to wildfires on the west coast. the rest of the country better get used to them, because they’re only gonna get more intense and frequent as the years go by
Because something like this has never happened in any of our lifetimes, and the fires are in a different country. But the news and internet is full of content about west coast wildfires every time they get up to the 10s of millions of acres size…
Because it sucks and is something we’ve never experienced before.
I’m used to crisp, clean air at all times where I live and this smoke really hit me hard.
It’s due to the market where people watch the news. The East Coast is a massive population center and consumes a ton of media, therefore the media is going to cater to those stories because that’s how they make money.
It’s the same reason why when a snowstorm hits New York City, the news acts like it’s the end of the world even though bigger, more severe storms hit elsewhere. Or why when there are wildfires in California, they get national attention but wildfires in other states maybe get a small blurb.
>So is it just because the Eastern US doesn’t have nearly as many wildfires as we do out west and so consequently deals with a lot less smoke?
Yeah. The Eastern US is much wetter, and additionally most of the northeast is deciduous forest which doesn’t burn as aggressively as evergreen/spruce forest. I’ve lived in the northeast for 30 years and nothing like this has happened before. At most we’ve had vaguely hazy skies from far away fires.
People weren’t prepared for it – the only reason anyone has masks or air purifiers is covid, and no one was ready to seal their windows or whatever else you might need to do.
It’s comparable to when Texas froze a couple years ago, I guess. Completely normal weather in some parts of the country, but not for them, so people were not prepared and it made national news.
Because the world revolves around NYC. It’s their world, rest of us are just living in it. Had this strictly been happening in every other area on the east coast not named NYC it wouldn’t be a story
Because not only has this never happened here before, it’s also extremely severe. So it’s like Miami getting a massive Buffalo-tier blizzard rather a few measly inches of snow. Not sure why you Westerners are being so weird about this.
Because the the lives of people in the northeast are simply more important than those in the west coast.
Pretty simple
First time it’s happened in my entire 29 years of life.
We do not have forest fires around here, it’s not that type of forest. So this is alarming.
We usually have hurricanes and blizzards. Not forest fires or tornadoes.
Also, talk about glass houses much? Doesn’t the west coast below central Cali basically shut down if there’s a drop of rain or god forbid snow?
East Coast bias.
I’d like to add that wildlife in the west coast is adapted to deal with fires much better than the stuff on the east coast
The same reason you westerners would freak out at the threat of a cat 4 hurricane, it isn’t normal.
An F2 or F3 tornado in California or anywhere on the west coast would make just as much headline news. When the same thing would barely make local news anywhere in the Midwest. Same thing goes for a small hurricane or tropical storm but the South instead of the Midwest.
It’s a big deal because it doesn’t ever happen there. They aren’t used to it just like you aren’t used to tornadoes or hurricanes.
I didn’t know AQI could have more than two digits before this week.