Hardrock 100 Air Quality / Weather Preview

The Hardrock 100 is scheduled to take place this week. There is also a very real possibility that the event is cancelled, due to the Gold Mountain Fire currently raging near Ouray.

Due to the fire, the Ouray 100 (two weeks out) was just cancelled, and there is a possibility that the Hardrock 100 is cancelled as well. This is sad for ultrarunners, but truly heartbreaking for the Coloradans whose lives and livelihoods are at stake.

I noticed that Open-Meteo captures an Air Quality Index, therefore I wanted to capture what current and forecasted air quality might look like this week. Here’s the current 5-day forecast:

So, things aren’t great right now, but are trending in a better (but still not great) direction. I’m using categorization and color coding from Open-Meteo. Per the Open-Meteo documentation, “the United States Air Quality Index (AQI) ranges from 0-50 (good), 51-100 (moderate), 101-150 (unhealthy for sensitive groups), 151-200 (unhealthy), 201-300 (very unhealthy) and 301-500 (hazardous).”

Here is another way to display the air quality, what this might look like on race day throughout the mountains - moderate for some aid stations, but mostly on the “unhealthy for sensitive groups” side for most of the event:

Assuming there is a Hardrock 100 this week, this is what we can expect as far as temperatures go:

Or, using the metric system:

How does this forecast compare to previous years of the Hardrock 100? I used Open-Meteo again to pull weather for each of the aid stations of the Hardrock course:

It appears that this weekend would be a warmer-than-usual Hardrock, and unlike last week’s Western States, one of the warmest Hardrocks in recent history (should the event actually still happen). At the end of the day, it’s somewhat fun to look at the data, but data matters much less than people; thus, sending good vibes for those being impacted by the fires right now.

Edit: this post was originally published on July 5th but updated on July 6th with updated data.