Summer Smog

Normally, the Plum Rains come in June and last until the first of July.  That's certainly the way it played out last year, when it rained most every day in the last three weeks of June.  Then it got hot - stinking hot and humid.

This has been a strange summer, weather-wise.  The June rains never really came.  It stormed from time-to-time, but fell well short of the rainfall of last year.  As June passed into July, the summer heat didn't really kick into gear.  I wouldn't say that it was cool in Suzhou, but it was certainly cooler than normal.  The daily temperatures topped out at about 90 degrees - 95 degrees at the most.  And the humidity was merely oppressive, instead of downright murderous. 

(While the U.S. Midwest was suffering through hotter than normal temperatures, many places in the rest of the world have been running a bit cooler than normal.  Suzhou has.  Northern Europe, too, has been having a cold, wet summer...at least according to my French, English, and Danish colleagues. )

The smog has been brutal, though.

More often than not, it is hazy in this part of China.   The high humidity is mostly to blame.  Pollution contributes.  But the hot, humid, continental air and the ocean breezes from the East are the main culprit.  Blue skies are a rare thing. Normally the skies are steely grey and overcast in the mornings.  The sun burns away much of the haze by afternoon.  Then, the heaviness returns as the air temperature falls to toward the dew point in the evening.

This June and July, though, there have been days in which the haze lasts all day long.  It's like being in a cloud.  The sun is just a pale white-orange disk, if you can see it at all.  And the colors of the world are a washed out to shades of grey, almost like at dusk.

The photos posted were taken on a day that was probably the worst we've seen in our time here.  They were taken in mid-afternoon, at what should be the height of daylight.  You can see how haze shrouds and  obscures everything.  I think, too, that the camera actually makes it look better than it does to the naked eye.  (In the photos, I can see buildings that I don't remember being able to see on my own.)