Apple Hill plans Labor Day weekend opening. What about smoke from the Caldor Fire?
Apple Hill, one of the Sacramento region’s most popular autumn attractions, announced earlier this week that many of its farms plan to open for business Labor Day weekend.
The farms are pressing on with opening, even as air monitors and smoke forecasts now warn of poor air quality Friday and Saturday in the Placerville area, with thick smoke descending from the Caldor Fire.
Chris Delfino, owner of the Delfino Farms vineyard and president of the Apple Hill Growers Association, said during an interview Friday morning that the smoke tends to clear out later in the day.
“The only concern they should have coming up here right now would be the smoke, and the smoke dissipates by the time they would get here,” Delfino said. “Most of them don’t get here until 11 or 12 o’clock anyway, and by then the smoke is cleared out of here.”
In a Wednesday post to its website, Apple Hill Growers Association said air quality had “significantly improved over the past few days” near the farms, advising visitors concerned about smoke to check PurpleAir.com for the latest air quality conditions and forecasts near Placerville or Camino.
Earlier Friday morning, both PurpleAir and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s AirNow maps showed abysmal conditions near Apple Hill, as heavy near-surface smoke settled in overnight. And forecasts warned of poor conditions throughout the day, as well as on Saturday.
Many monitors set up near Placerville and Camino displayed air quality index (AQI) readings between 500 and 600 at 8 a.m. Friday, according to PurpleAir and AirNow. By 10:45 a.m., several of those readings had dropped to between 350 and 400. By around 1 p.m., they had dropped further, most of them between 100 and 150.
Any AQI reading above 300 is considered “hazardous” to the general population, meaning people should not spend any significant amount of time outdoors. AQI levels between 100 and 150 are considered unhealthy for sensitive groups.
Thousands of firefighters have been battling the Caldor Fire, which ignited south of Pollock Pines and has spread mainly northeast toward the Lake Tahoe Basin, scorching nearly 350 square miles since sparking Aug. 14. Tens of thousands of El Dorado County residents remained under mandatory evacuation orders as of Friday morning.
Apple Hill is a consortium of more than four dozen apple farms, located north of Highway 50 between Placerville and Camino.
About a dozen associated farms on the east side of Apple Hill were still, as of Friday morning, under a voluntary evacuation warning from the El Dorado County Sheriff’s Office, on the very westernmost edge of that advisory.
The Apple Hill Growers Association, in a statement this week announcing plans to be open for business this weekend, said none of its growers “sustained any damage and in fact, fire crews were able to hold the fire line well to the south of Apple Hill.”
The bigger issue is smoke, which has tanked air quality throughout the greater Sacramento area off and on since the start of the fire. Conditions vary day to day, depending on wind patterns and fire intensity.
A special smoke statement for the Caldor Fire, issued by the U.S. Interagency Wildland Fire Air Quality Response Program, specifically mentioned Apple Hill as an area of concern.
“Heavy smoke conditions overnight settled into Sly Park, Apple Hill, and Placerville,” federal air resource adviser Jen Croft wrote in a Friday morning bulletin. “Expect to see this settling again (Friday night).”
The interagency program’s smoke forecast for Friday in Placerville reads: “Hazardous conditions throughout the day, minimal relief in late evening,” and AQI levels above 300 were also in Saturday’s forecast.
Air quality is difficult to forecast more than a day or two in advance. The air monitors have not yet shared outlooks for Sunday or Monday.
Labor Day weekend is supposed to kick off this year’s “apple season,” the growers said in posts earlier this week. While some Apple Hill farms are open year-round, many plan to open this weekend.
This story was originally published September 3, 2021 at 10:30 AM with the headline "Apple Hill plans Labor Day weekend opening. What about smoke from the Caldor Fire?."
