Ozone Alert Deja Vu

It's happened again.

We reported last week that an ozone alert was skipped, even though pollution levels here in the Denver metro area rose above federal health standards. Tonight, it looks like deja vu--only worse.

No ozone alert was issued today, so officially, everything is fine. That's not what the monitors are saying, though. As of 6:00 P.M. tonight, ground-level ozone concentrations have exceeded federal health standards at two monitors--one at Rocky Flats and one in Boulder.

But it looks like things are going to get worse here in the next hour or so. Ozone is measured as an eight hour average. So as more high readings rack up in the average, it's very likely that many more monitors are going to show exceedances of health standards.

And again, no ozone alert has been issued by the state of Colorado so far. Well, for what it 's worth, we'd advise people to stay indoors tonight, avoid strenuous activity, and chill out. In the meantime, let's hope the state gets on the ball here.

UPDATE: As of 9:00 P.M. tonight, five monitors in the Denver metro area had ozone concentrations exceed federal health standards. At the Rocky Flats monitor in Jefferson County, eight hour ozone concentrations reached 95 parts per billion. No ozone alert has been issued as of yet.