Smoke And Haze Lingers For A Bit Longer

Burlington, Vermont "haze cam" this morning. It's a little 
better than yesterday, but you still can't see the Adirondacks
because of the smoke in the air. 

 UPDATE: Shortly after I posted this, the Air Quality Alert was lifted in Vermont a few hours earlier than planned. It's still smoky and hazy, but the gunk is not thick enough to create a major health concern

PREVIOUS DISCUSSION

Air quality alerts remained in effect this morning in Vermont and most of the rest of New England as a stubborn cloud of smoke from Canadian wildfires lingered over the region.

Some relief from a cold front bringing in air from a not burning section of Quebec MIGHT help later today. The smoke will always be close enough to return or resurge for the foreseeable future.  

The smoke will either come from Canada, or the western United States. Who knows? There might even be a touch of it from Siberia.

For the next week at least, we'll be under an air flow from the northwest. So during that time, we'll blame Canada. At least for the smoke and their wildfires. 

 On some days over the next week, our air will come from further north in Canada, which isn't really smoky, so the atmosphere will be pretty clean. Sometimes the air will come from a little further south in Canada, picking up smoke from large wildfires near the eastern end of Lake Winnipeg. 

As of Monday, at least 128 wildfires were burning in Manitoba, so you know the supply of smoke from that region will continue.  That's not even including the smoke from fires in the western United States that is also drifting east across North America.

The air had already improved somewhat overnight, at least temporarily. On Monday, amid the thick haze, the air quality index was above 150, which is considered unhealthy. This morning, it was in the 50 to 100 range, which is called "moderate." In other words, not great, but not a disaster, either. 

The amount of smoke and haze in the air will continue to wax and wane today, but forecasts call for a general decline. This will be aided by that cold front from Quebec.  Scattered rain showers along and ahead of the front will wash some of the soot from the air, and suppress the smoke from Manitoba to our south and west, at least for awhile. 

The air quality alert is currently scheduled to expire at 1 p.m. today. 

There might be some strong thunderstorms with this in southern Vermont, with the best chance of that happening along and south of Route 4 in the late afternoon or early evening.

Further north, there could be showers today, but no biggie, really. 

Showers and thunderstorms are always a part of summer. We love summer rains when they do hit. It seems like smoke is now a part of summer, too.  And will be as climate change worsens.

This is not the summers we long for.