Quote:
Originally Posted by COtoOC
Yeah, I remember LA in the 80s and the mountains basically disappeared for the entire summer. Maybe you could barely see an outline of them early in the morning. And when you flew into the LA Basin, it was like going down into a bowl of soup. You could wash your car and a couple days later, run your finger across it and see black on your finger!
Flying into the LA Basin today is absolutely nothing like that, overall. You might notice a little haze here and there, but overall a HUGE improvement!
Same thing here in Denver. I lived here for a couple years in the mid 90s (then went back to CA) and back then, Denver got the inversion layer in winter a lot and the air would turn dark brown. You would walk outside and it was like you had sunglasses on, and the air smelled sort of like bleach (same smell in LA back in the day). Today, the only time we've had horrific air quality was when there are forest fires off to the west.
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Sounds like Beijing (mountains clearly visible on clear days, but disappear when smoggy). But the smog in Beijing is worst in the winter, not the summer due to the prevalence of coal burning for heat in northern China. If they ever get around to retrofitting all the old coal burning heating plants to burn natural gas instead, that would have a huge impact on northern China's air quality.