Water lantern festival pittsburgh full#
Water lantern festival pittsburgh code#

They’re small enough to travel freely through the human body, deep into the lungs and then into the bloodstream, wreaking havoc on the cardiovascular system. The particles can travel long distances and linger in the air for days, defying gravity’s pull.

Water lantern festival pittsburgh code#

The code purple warnings indicated high levels of fine particles, each with a diameter of 2.5 microns or less - “many times smaller than the width of a hair,” Donahue said. “Those weather systems set up all the time, but usually there’s not a fire behind them.”

“That’s essentially what you had, except instead of baseballs, it was smoke,” said Peter DeCarlo, an associate professor and air quality expert at Johns Hopkins University. The systems combined to shoot the smoke south, much like the wheels in a baseball pitching machine. A low pressure system loomed to the east, spinning counterclockwise. Krall studies the air, and she had watched the air quality readings rise in the days before the worst of the smoke blew in.Ī high-pressure system hung west of the fires, spinning clockwise. Air quality monitors around the region registered code purple on June 8, the worst air anyone there had breathed in years. Jenna Krall, an assistant professor and air quality expert at George Mason University in northern Virginia, was days away from giving birth when the toxic air arrived. Yet, until this summer, the smoke had mostly spared the East. Wildfire smoke has menaced the West in recent years, an era of rising temperatures and erratic rainfall, fed by global warming.

Over three weeks in June, dozens of cities logged purple and maroon alerts, triggered by wildfire smoke that drifted south from Canada. In those 21 years, no Eastern county reported a code maroon day. The American Lung Association, which collects air data, recorded exactly 10 code purple air days in the East or Midwest between 20, each reported by a single county.

The Bung Fai festival is not only found in Isan or Northeasthern Thailand and North Thailand and Laos, but also in Amphoe Sukhirin, Narathiwat.( The Hill) – Meteorologists struggled to explain “Smokeageddon,” the acrid campfire haze that settled over the East Coast and Midwest last month, and with good reason: It was unprecedented.īefore this summer, code purple and code maroon air quality alerts, the two most dire categories, were almost unknown in the eastern United States.

Water lantern festival pittsburgh full#

The festival in Thailand also includes special programs and specific local patterns like Bung Fai (Parade dance) and a Beautiful Bung Fai float such as Yasothon the third weekend of May, and continues Suwannaphum District, Roi Et on the first weekend of June, Phanom Phrai District Roi Et during the full moon of the seventh month in Lunar year's calendar each year. Local participants and sponsors use the occasion to enhance their social prestige, as is customary in traditional Buddhist folk festivals throughout Southeast Asia. Celebrations typically include preliminary music and dance performances, competitive processions of floats, dancers and musicians on the second day, and culminating on the third day in competitive firings of home-made rockets. The Rocket Festival (Boun Bang Fai) is a merit-making ceremony traditionally practiced by ethnic Lao people near the beginning of the wet season in numerous villages and municipalities, in the regions of Northeastern Thailand and Laos. Whatever the legends you may read about, its roots always link to the ancient China. The town was spared, and in gratitude the people continued to commemorate the event annually by carrying colorful lanterns throughout the town. The emperor, fooled by all the light, assumed the town was already engulfed in flames. He planned to destroy the town with fire, but he was thwarted by a fairy who advised the people to light lanterns across the town on the appointed day of destruction. During the Han Dynasty, the festival was connected to Ti Yin, the deity of the North Star.Īnother legend concerning the festival’s origin tells the tale of the Jade Emperor (You Di), who became angered at a town for killing his beautiful crane. Another likely origin is the celebration of 'the declining darkness of winter' and community's ability to 'move about at night with human-made light,' namely, lanterns. As a result, Emperor Ming ordered all households, temples and the imperial palace to light lanterns on that evening.įrom there it developed into a folk custom. However, its roots trace back more than 2000 years ago and is popularly linked to the reign of Emperor Ming of Han at the time when Buddhism was growing in China.Įmperor Ming was an advocate of Buddhism and noticed Buddhist monks would light lanterns in temples on the fifteenth day of the first lunar month.

There are several beliefs about the origin of the Lantern Festival.