A smoggy Winter

Thankfully the winter is over.  We are very relieved to see warmer temperatures.  We are more than happy to shed our thermal underwear, and heavy coats.  We are very hopeful that the air will be better now that warmer temperatures are here.  This winter, the air was simply terrible!

Now, we live in China, and we live in a really big city.  We really do not expect that the air is super clean, but this past winter was unbelievable.  In Shanghai in early December they broke the record for the worst smog/pollution since they started recording it.  The two days after that, it was just as bad or worse here in Hangzhou.  When everyone started talking about the pollution, I started to pay more attention to it and would look up "Air quality Index".  If the air was really bad, this is what we wore when we were outside:

We all would wear masks to try and filter out some of the pollution.


This is not a particularly clear day, but normally we can see across the river from our balcony.

However, several days this past winter, this is what we saw when we looked outside:

This is picture from the apartment of some friends, on another smoggy day:

 Several days the air quality index was this high or higher:

We are also extremely thankful that we were not really sick this past winter.  Jon ran to catch a bus one smoggy night and he had a cough for a couple of days, but other than that, we stayed healthy.

Like I said, we are very thankful that Spring is here!