![Man stands in front of WSU weather monitoring tower](https://s3.wp.wsu.edu/uploads/sites/902/2024/04/2024summer-heat-is-on3.1000-2-INL-198x198.jpg)
Smoke
![Man stands in front of WSU weather monitoring tower](https://s3.wp.wsu.edu/uploads/sites/902/2024/04/2024summer-heat-is-on3.1000-2-INL-198x198.jpg)
![Wine glass splashing with smoke. Photo Dreamstime](https://s3.wp.wsu.edu/uploads/sites/902/2018/04/2018summer-wine-smoke-thumb-198x198.jpg)
Smoke gets in your wine
Smoke truly gets under the skin of wine grapes.
As microscopic particles and liquid droplets ooze and eddy through the vineyard, grapes are coated with toxic chemicals. Worse, smoke from forest and range fires manages to get into the plant itself, wreaking havoc with the plant’s internal chemistry.
In self-defense, grape vines attempt to sequester toxic smoke particles that infiltrate berries and leaves by binding sugar molecules to the offending invaders. The plant can then metabolically shuffle the sugar-trapped particles into places where the smoke won’t be as harmful to the vines’ mission: produce grapes and reproduce.
Humans interfere with the vines’ mission when we … » More …
![Satellite map showing smoke covering the entire state of Washington on September 5, 2017](https://s3.wp.wsu.edu/uploads/sites/902/2018/04/2018summer-hazy-1-198x198.jpg)
In the hazy days of summer
![cloud illustration](https://s3.wp.wsu.edu/uploads/sites/902/2018/04/2018summer-wa-air-thumb-198x198.jpg)
Rising particulates in Washington air
Over the last several years, people in Washington state have been exposed to worsening air quality for longer periods of time. The following charts show that increase, based on information from Rahil Dhammapala ’06 PhD (Civ. Eng.) at the Washington State Department of Ecology.
View the above chart in PDF format