Air quality alert in effect for Bay Area ahead of 49ers game Thursday

Preparing to play a second NFL game in less than a week is difficult enough, but wildfires in Oregon and Northern California have added a new set of potential problems that the 49ers could face Thursday night.

Ahead of San Francisco’s matchup against the New York Giants, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District announced a Spare the Air alert for Wednesday and Thursday. The alert indicates that pollutants in the air exceed federal health standards. This comes in the wake of wildfire smoke coming to San Francisco and the rest of the Bay Area this week thanks to wind patterns.

Kristine Roselius, a spokesperson for the BAAQMD, told SFGATE through email that the district expects “unhealthy air quality across the region.” Roselius explained that the district could not give a specific forecast for Thursday’s Air Quality Index — a measure of air quality that operates on a scale from 0 to 500 — during the game because “wildfire smoke is very unpredictable and is highly dependent on wildfire behavior.” As of 3 p.m. PT on Wednesday, the closest federally monitored air sensor to Levi’s Stadium had a reading of 152. The range for “unhealthy” air quality goes from 151 to 200; the sensor hit 170 earlier Wednesday.

A spokesperson for the National Weather Service told SFGATE that smoke “will probably linger into” Thursday.

The NFL did not respond to SFGATE’s question about what AQI measurement might lead to a pause in gameplay, but there are past clues about the league’s standards regarding air quality. Back in 2020, ahead of the 49ers’ home opener against the Arizona Cardinals, the Bay Area was experiencing similarly dangerous air quality due to wildfire smoke. The Friday before the Sunday game, the AQI measurement was at 194, according to an NBC Sports Bay Area story at the time. Head coach Kyle Shanahan said in a radio spot two days before that game that if the AQI were to hit 200, “that would be a huge deal.” 

“Once it gets to 200, it does [affect us] because you’re not allowed to be out there after that,” Shanahan said. “If it gets to 200, that would be a huge deal. I know when it’s above 150, that does affect a certain group of people that happen to be higher risk, preexisting conditions. If it got above 150 you could lose a few players, but 200 is the mark where you can’t go out there.”

The San Francisco Chronicle reported at the time that the NFL would consider relocating or postponing a game if there were “definitive evidence” the AQI measurement would be above 200 at the stadium at game time, citing the league’s operations manual. (The Chronicle and SFGATE are both owned by Hearst but have separate newsrooms.)

Thursday Night Football games are often maligned as total slopfests; the limited preparation time for coaching staffs, combined with almost no recovery or practice time for players, tends to result in some of the season’s worst games. Adding bad air into the mix isn’t exactly ideal.