Purple Mountain Majesty?

You've likely heard of the "Where's Waldo" books before. Today, I have a new game for you. Instead of looking for Waldo, look at this picture and see if you can find the mountain in it.
Give up? It's right in the middle of the picture. The reason you can't really see it is this mountain valley phenomenon called the inversion. When it gets cold outside, the coldest air gets trapped in the valleys, and then a warmer layer of air moves over the top of it. This traps all the pollutants from cars, cows, factories, and the like into the precious air that we breath.

Here's another view of the inversion, looking at some of the other mountains around us. Remember, most of the year, these pictures would be perfectly clear.

Our state is known for this. We even have "green", "yellow", and "red" days. Green means good air. Yellow, somewhat bad air and people are encouraged to limit driving. Red means you should stop driving, pull out your bicycle, bundle up, and then ride around, exerting yourself to breathe in all the bad air and make it go away. Oh, yes, stop your wood-burning stove, too, because that's going to make it even worse!

So basically, we await the next major storm to blow through, blowing out all the bad air (for a while), until the next layer of warm air settles over us and we get to do it all again.

So if you call us and hear us coughing up a storm, you have a little better understanding of why we so "love" our "purple mountain majesty" during the winter months.

(If you need more proof of this, here's what was on the front of one of our papers.)