I got a couple tickets for it but I wasn't going to freeze either. I sympathize with you. I lived in Pocatello for years and the elemental phosphate plants, FMC and Simplot both overwhelmed the valley most of each winter, the inversions are just awful. Walking outside the home was so terrible that it seemed that someone was waiting outside the door to smack you in the face with a dusty bag of fertilizer with the first breath you took. That would go on for days, sometimes all winter. I got phosphate poisoning every October without fail, soon as it got cold out, was like a bad sinus infection that took weeks to get over. I learned to wear thick neck gaiters whenever I went out just so I could breathe.
I can relate to the inflow of bad air from westerly places too. I'm up in MT and we get all the forest fire smoke from those places and Idaho, just depends on how the prevailing winds are blowing. Summer of 2012 we had so much smoke up here from CA, OR, NV and ID that it was hard to see, burning eyes, like being a two pack a day smoker! I think we had all of about 7 days of relatively clear skies all summer. I have friends who are smoke jumpers, they left in May that year and I didn't see them again until mid October.
Bad air may become the norm this year as there will be some nasty fires if we don't get lots more snow and a good amount of rain all summer. Hard to have protests for that at the scene but the climate situation needs to be addressed in a big way asap.
I hope things improve in SLC before long.
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