I wouldn’t classify today as great by any measure. Though it was cloudy and I couldn’t see any sun at all, it was oddly hot and gross inside my apartment. I checked and the temperature didn’t dip below 25 degrees Celsius all day. Because of the bad air quality outside, I still have to keep my windows relatively closed. As such, the air inside was hot, muggy, and stale. I sweated throughout the day and I was a stinking mess by the end of afternoon.
By 5pm though, I could see the smoke had lessened a bit. Instead of not being able to see even a block away, I could see several blocks away. Don’t get me wrong, the area is still blanketed with a layer of haze and smoke, but at least that haze and smoke isn’t as dense as it was before.
This evening, I opened up my windows a bit more than I had before. I just wanted to get some more “fresh” air into my apartment and hopefully cool it down. I’m keeping an eye on my air quality sensor. It shows that opening the windows more definitely does make the particulate count go higher, but it’s not dramatically higher. In return, the air feels less suffocating and my skin doesn’t feel like it has this slime on it. Strangely, while it feels cooler now in the evening, the thermometers I have in my apartment show the temperature hasn’t budged at all. When I woke up this morning it was 25 degrees Celsius in my bedroom and it’s now about 2am and it’s still 25 degrees Celsius.
It shouldn’t be this hot in the middle of September on a day where I didn’t see any sun. I know for many years I’ve wished for warm September days but that was supposed to be accompanied with clear and blue skies and fresh, clean air.
It will be probably a few weeks before everything will be normal again and by normal, I mean only having to deal with a global pandemic. It is a sign that this year is so terrible that I am actually wishing we go back to the good old days of only having to worry about washing your hands and social distancing.
I am going to bed now.