Seattle’s air quality is the worst among major cities in world
SEATTLE — Seattle’s air quality is the worst among major cities in the world Saturday evening, according to IQ Air, which tracks levels across the globe.
The air quality in the city reached an “unhealthy” rating of 190 as of 5:45 pm Saturday, giving Seattle the worst rating in the world. Lahore, Pakistan has the second worst air quality with a 176 rating. “Unhealthy” air quality levels range between 150-200 before reaching “very unhealthy” from 201-300, according to IQ Air. An air quality level over 300 is considered hazardous.
Around Puget Sound, the air is thick and visibility is way down. An Air Quality Alert is in effect for much of our area because of these fires and could cause health concerns for people with respiratory issues.
But that didn’t stop many from still getting out and enjoying their Saturday.
Seattle’s Kerry Park is usually known as picture-perfect.
“I’ve seen the photos online of the viewpoint and thought it looks like a great view of the city came up here and was like whoa expecting for it to be much clearer than this, so yeah the smoke is quite visible,” said Marshall Max, whose visited Seattle’s Kerry Park on Saturday from the United Kingdom.
Despite the smoke, many visitors including Max are still enjoying taking in the sights.
“We will get a few, we will get a few, still nice to have it for the memory bank, but you know wasn’t exactly like Google in the end,” Max said.
KING 5 didn’t have to Google how long this smoke will last in Seattle. KING 5 just asked our very own morning meteorologist Rich Marriott.
“As we get in tomorrow we’ll start to see some cleaner air begin to come to the coast not really into the interior but it will quit bringing smoke in here,” Marriott said. “By tomorrow during the day we’ll probably be up to moderate air quality which is a vast improvement over today and by Monday we should be getting back into good air quality.”
With a breath of fresh air just on the horizon, Marriott acknowledged Saturday marks the worst smoke western Washington has encountered this year, with some areas in the Puget Sound ranging from unhealthy for sensitive groups and unhealthy for everyone. But he was hopeful, that we’ll have a picturesque end to the wildfire season.
“Well hopefully this will be it for the summer for us and we got off pretty easily this summer with just one episode and really a short one,” Marriott said. “But we still have a chunk of September left and it’s still wildfire season, so we’ll see.”