With wildfires burning in the region, the PurpleAir air quality sensor installed at Fireweed Hub is providing valuable information and insights. This link will take you right there, zoomed in on the New Denver sensor, although you can always just search up the main PurpleAir map and then navigate to our area if you don’t have the direct link handy.
When tapping or clicking on New Denver’s coloured circle, this pane will be displayed. It provides a snapshot of the current air quality, as well as averages over the past day and the past week, both of which are helpful in gauging overall health risk. The 10-minute average is the best number to look at for current conditions as it smooths out blips from the exhaust of vehicles driving by. The default measurement is the US EPA scale, for which numbers below 50 are good, and those over 100 begin to get concerning.
This pane is also opened, and it shows the 10-minute-smoothed trend over the past 72 hours. The yellow and orange zones provide a straightforward way to assess air quality. Steep drops in particulates are often seen when storm clouds move through, as the low pressure weather system allows smoke to escape upwards and disperse.
However, PurpleAir sensors do more than just quantify the small particles that constitute pollution from combustion. The settings menu (red arrow) can be used to select other options. among the most useful are the weather-related measures of air pressure, humidity and temperature. Curious how cold it got last night? You can always find out.