Smoke Season Behind the Wheel

A smoke day is not a foggy day with a different smell. The visibility loss behaves differently, the light plays tricks, and the material landing on your car is abrasive. Northern California gets weeks of this in a bad year, often hundreds of miles from the fire producing it.

What smoke does to what you can see

Heavy smoke flattens contrast rather than simply shortening the distance you can see. Brake lights and turn signals read later than they should, edge lines wash out, and the orange cast can make a red light harder to pick out of the background than it is on a clear day. Depth perception suffers because the usual cues — haze increasing with distance, shadows, color falling off — are all disrupted at once.

Vehicle Code section 24400(b) requires at least two lighted headlamps during darkness or inclement weather, and subdivision (c) includes any condition that keeps a driver from clearly discerning a person or vehicle at 1,000 feet. A serious smoke day meets that plainly, and the reason to turn lights on is less about seeing and more about being seen from behind. Low beams, not high — the same reason as fog, since the particulate reflects light back at you.

Recirculate, and change the filter

Set the climate system to recirculate rather than pulling outside air through the vents, and keep windows up. Most cars built in the last couple of decades have a cabin air filter, and after a heavy smoke season it will be visibly loaded. Replacing it is inexpensive and it is one of the few maintenance items that produces an immediately noticeable difference. A cabin filter is not respiratory protection, but it is better than pulling smoke straight in.

Ash is abrasive — do not dry wipe it

This is the mistake that costs money. Wildfire ash contains fine mineral grit, and dragging a dry cloth across a hood coated in it puts scratches into the clear coat that a wash will not remove. If ash has fallen on the car:

• Rinse first, with a hose and plenty of water, before anything touches the paint.
• Do not use the wipers to clear an ashy windshield dry. Wash the glass first; ash under a wiper blade scratches glass and ruins the blade.
• Get it off sooner rather than later, particularly before it gets wet and sits, because ash is alkaline and dwell time makes it worse.

Is ash damage a claim?

It depends on the damage and on your policy. Physical damage to a vehicle from a wildfire event is generally the province of comprehensive coverage rather than collision. Whether a particular instance of ash etching or paint damage is covered, and how a deductible applies to it, is a question for your own carrier and your own policy language — it is not something a general rule can answer, and we would not want you making a decision based on one. If your car has been sitting under falling ash, photograph it, and call your carrier before you have anything repainted.

When to simply not drive

On the worst days the sensible answer is to postpone. Fire activity closes roads with little warning, and a road that was open in the morning can be under an active closure by afternoon. Check conditions before a long drive during a fire, keep the tank fuller than usual, and treat any route through a fire area as subject to change while you are on it.

Ask what your comprehensive coverage includes before smoke season rather than during it.