The USC vs. UCSD dual meet scheduled to take place on Saturday, Jan. 11, has been canceled due to the ongoing wildfires, SwimSwam has learned. The meet was supposed to be held at USC’s Uytengsu Aquatics Center.
This is the fourth day of fighting the still-burning fires across the Los Angeles area that have destroyed more than 35,000 acres. The Palisades and Eaton fires, the two largest blazes, persist. The wind continues to be a barrier to containing the fires, though progress has been made in containing smaller fires across the city. As of Friday morning, LAist reports the Eaton fire is 3% contained.
The USC campuses are located in downtown LA and are not currently under evacuation order, and the university continues to monitor the air quality. The university is on winter break. As of writing, the university emergency page still says second-semester classes are expected to begin in-person on Monday, Jan. 13.
This is not the only meet this weekend canceled due to extreme weather. While fires rage in Los Angeles, the southern U.S. is preparing for a weekend of cold and snow with winter storm Cora. Yesterday, Georgia and LSU canceled their dual meet scheduled for Jan. 11 in Athens, GA. The National Weather Service has issued storm warnings for parts of Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Arkansas, Alabama, and all of Tennessee.
With this meet canceled, USC’s next scheduled meets see the team head up to the Bay Area. The divers are expected to compete at the two-day Cal Diving Invitational from Friday, Jan. 17-19, while the swimmers take on back-to-back duals against Cal and Stanford the same weekend. UCSD is slated to host California Baptist on Saturday, Jan. 25.
Classic soft usc
If you can’t handle a few carcinogens you shouldn’t have swam
Are they even able to practice with the bad air quality?
probably depends on which way the wind is blowing. Air quality at the USC campus right now is really not that bad – 86, which is considered moderate.
I’m kinda jealous you guys get decent air quality in the winter even with frequent fires (I know the US is huge, but there never seem to be big accumulations of pollutants over longer periods of time there like in Europe or Southern Asia) . It has been over 200 in Hungary everywhere in the past two weeks (though it’s starting to clear up finally).
Is that on the same scale as we use? Even in the most fire-hit parts it’s only like 150 right now.
I’m pretty sure it is. The site I use to check air quality is American (it’s on a scale 0-500)
it was really bad for a bit a couple days ago, like the weather app was showing it at ~400. But as bad as the Santa Ana wins have been with spreading the fire, they’ve also been great at dispersing the smoke
Good to hear. Thank you, Braden!