"It smells like a bonfire."

Leaving the office on Monday afternoon, those were my exact words.  Over the next couple of hours, wind gust through the Treasure Valley blew even more of the smoke from fires in British Columbia and Washington State into our area.  That deteriorated our air quality to an "orange" level, meaning it could be dangerous for those in sensitive groups to recreate and enjoy time outdoors.  According to the Idaho Statesman, today's air quality could be the same or worse than Monday's.  If it gets much worse, we could see a red air quality alert meaning it's unhealthy for everyone.

It's no surprise that poor air quality can cause schools to change their athletic plans to ensure the safety of their athletes. In some cases, athletes have moved inside for practices and College of Idaho might swap home games with one of their opponents in Eastern Oregon because the air quality there is even worse than the Treasure Valley.

So is there anything we can do to blow the smoke out of the Treasure Valley? Well, maybe we can try being creative like a Spokane group that's gone viral on Facebook. Appropriately named "Blow Spokane's Smoke Away to Canada,"  it's organizers claim to have completed a mathematical calculation that if the 550,000+ people who live in the city all put at least five box fans on their roofs Friday afternoon, aim them toward Canada and set them to high, it will blow the smoke back where it came from.

Without consulting our friend Bill Nye the Science Guy first, I'm not quite sure this would do much of anything but hey I admire their "teamwork makes the dream work attitude and creativity!"

Oh...and if by some off chance that this was successful and we want to give it a go here in the Treasure Valley, we'd need to track down approximately 1.1 million fans to cover the 223,000 person population of Boise alone.  Think we can get those Amazon Primed to us ASAP?

Full disclosure, this article was meant to make you laugh.  We sincerely send our positive thoughts to the brave men and women fighting wildfires all over the Western United States and Canada this summer.

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