Once again, millions of residents along the East Coast are wondering if smoke from the wildfires raging in Canada will be, once again, making its way to NYC. The concerns have risen after wildfires across British Columbia and Alberta resulted in a heavy haze over portions of Montana, the Dakotas, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. The smoky haze started on Sunday and lingered into Monday morning.
In a tweet from the National Weather Service in Duluth, officials stated “Smoke from Canadian wildfires has been mixing down to the surface, as seen by this @MnDOT webcam near Cook, MN. Expect this near-surface smoke to continue to move southeast across the Northland today. An air quality alert is in effect for NE MN until 8 AM CDT Monday.”
Some of the smoke could drift as far south as Iowa and Chicago, causing the skies to take on a milky appearance by early Wednesday, according to National Weather Service in Chicago’s meteorologist Rafal Ogorek.
The report from the Canadian government’s National Wildland Fire Situation stated that nearly 90 fires are burning across Canada right now. According to FOX Weather, smoke will most likely not enter NYC airspace throughout the next two weeks.
The station’s weather reported, “If there are any effects felt over the next couple of weeks, the FOX forecast center said they’ll likely be confined to the U.S.-Canada border region and not venture far to the south.”
A map from AirNow.gov shows the present air quality across the NYC area, which FOX 5 NYC’s Mike Woods said, “It does not look like significant smoke is coming this way. In fact, it looks like it’s barely making it into upstate New York.”
Concerns about the smoke reaching New York have been valid since last June when winds blew smoke from unhindered Canadian wildfires deep into the region. The incident last summer resulted in the Department of Environmental Conservation issuing an official Air Quality Health Advisory for all five NYC Burroughs.
On June 7, NYC was reported to have the world’s worst air quality of any major city on Earth, according to IQAir.com. The city reported an overall AQI rating of more than 350, which is over twice as high as Dubai.
Woods said, “It doesn’t look like the same scenario as we had last summer.” Even so, NYC residents still want to know the outlook for this year.
So far, thousands of residents in Western Canada have left their homes after several fires were fueled by a combination of an ongoing drought and increasingly warm temperatures. The Parker Lake Wildfire is considered one of the largest of the wildfires and is actively burning in the province of British Columbia. The fire has consumed over 6,100 acres as of Sunday, and with winds and dry brush, firefighters believe it is continuing to show extreme behavior.
Wildfires have also been reported in Alberta, and the area experienced thick smoke and poor air quality across large portions of the province. Fort McMurray in Alberta was evacuated as the blaze tore through over 13,500 acres.
According to the British Columbia Wildfire Service, “Conditions in many parts of BC, and especially in the Prince George Fire Centre (PGFC), are unseasonably dry and more typical of those observed in the late summer. As a result, fuels are more susceptible to ignition and wildfires can spread more quickly.”
It should be noted that authorities have also been monitoring fires that have rekindled from those last year that burned over 45 million acres in total. The wildfire season in Canada generally starts in May and lasts until September, however, the majority of fires are reported in June and July.
