Punjab Isn't Burning Yet. That's a Postponement, Not a Pardon.
Two NASA FIRMS frames, same date one year apart: Punjab ablaze on 12 October 2025, almost dark on 12 October 2026. Rain has been doing the scrubbing. But the VayuMet model gives the north a western disturbance through 17 October and then nothing — winds fall back to 8 km/h and stay there from 19 October, just as the harvest forces the burning window shut. ECMWF CAMS already has Delhi NCR touching 138 µg/m³ before dawn, nine times the WHO 24-hour guideline, and the aerosol is smoke, not dust.
Forecasting India's Smog Season — Why One Air Quality Number Cannot Tell You What You Are Breathing
Between mid-October and mid-November, northern India's air deteriorates through a combination of crop-residue smoke, festival emissions and a shallow winter inversion. A single Air Quality Index figure collapses all of that into one number — but dust and combustion smoke behave differently, clear differently, and call for different responses. How VayuMet separates them, how visibility is estimated from aerosol loading, and what the method cannot tell you.