BALTIMORE — We have seen air quality drop a lot this year. Most of the time it has been from wildfire smoke. That is not the case here. Ozone is to blame in this case. It is more concentrated because of the calm winds, heat, and sunlight we have had. Our AQI was sitting around 150 which is counties shaded in orange. That means that the air was unhealthy for sensitive groups. It was on the highest end of that scale though. The exception was Cecil and Harford counties, both were in the unhealthy for general population category.
The air will get a little better over the next few days, but we will still likely be under a code orange.
This means if you have a hard time breathing, or are sensitive to poor air, you might notice this Thursday.
You can help lower ozone levels by avoiding using gas powered equipment until the air improves.
