The promise of relief from smoke-filled skies that teased the Bay Area before the weekend has been replaced by the likelihood that the cloud of soot resulting from fires up and down the West Coast will continue to overstay its welcome, according to the National Weather Service.

Like an unwanted guest, the dirty air just won’t go away.

“The system that we were looking at that we thought might help us early this week unfortunately passed right over the top of us,” meteorologist Brian Garcia said. “So no bueno, right?”

The air is far from good, and it’s been that way for nearly a full month. A Spare the Air alert remained in effect for a record 28th consecutive day Monday. The record has doubled the old mark of 14 set during the 2018 Camp Fire in Paradise and has surpassed by three the combined number of Spare the Air days from 2017-19.

At 6 a.m., most of the air quality readings by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District measured the fine particulate matter above 180 and close to the mark of 201 that marks “very unhealthy air.

In East and West Oakland and at Laney College in Lake Merritt, the figure read 198. Berkeley had an air quality reading of 195 and Pleasanton was at 191. Redwood City was at 196 at 5 a.m., and Concord was at 190. Anything between 150-200 is considered unhealthy air for everyone.

Those marks don’t figure to get significantly better until the marine layer that began trapping the smoke last week is pushed away from the area, according to Garcia.

“The marine layer is still in place, and it’s still trapping the all the pollutants at the lower levels,” he said. “What we’re really looking for are some scouring winds to come through and mix with some vertical movement with the air mass.”

That mixing will help “blow the lid off” the marine layer, Garcia said, and could “help clean us out.”

It is offering no guarantee. Garcia said forecasters are watching a low-pressure area off the Pacific Northwest but it is not expected to arrive until the end of the work week or Saturday but they are unsure how the smoke burning from fires along the West Coast will interact with it.

“The big asterisks here are the fires,” Garcia said. “They’re still burning and producing smoke along the West Coast, so there is is smoke that’s getting sucked into this low-pressure that’s off shore. That low pressure than could carry some of that smoke back.”

Garcia compared the phenomenon to a boomerang effect and said it’s preventing forecasters from pointing to an exact time when the air will be fresh again.

“Until it actually moves in, we won’t know,” he said. “We’re hoping this weekend.”