Smoke From Wildfires Chokes Much Of Nation, Including Vermont

Much of the nation, especially areas in red, have smoky,
hazy skies today due to smoke from western forest fires.

 As I expected all along, waves of smoke and haze have been crossing the nation due to wildfires in the western United States and Canada.

Sometimes, the haze and smoke will get thicker, and this is one of those times. 

The air quality noticeably worsened yesterday in much of the Northeast and southeastern Canada as a wave of smoke came through. 

Here in St. Albans, Vermont, what would have been a pleasant summer evening of watching thunderheads majestically rise over the mountains was ruined by the haze obstructing visibility. Unfortunately, wrecking visibility is not the worst aspect of these episodes.  There's a bit of a health concern as well

Sometimes in these episodes, almost all the smoke goes high overhead, giving us a hazy sun but no real health concerns, at least locally. Other times, some of the smoke is at or near the surface. This is one of those times. 

An evening thunderhead rising in the sky is barely visible
through the smoke last evening as seen from St. Albans, Vermont.

You can tell just by going outside. Last evening, the usual organic aroma of a mid-summer evening outside my house had an added ingredient - a whiff of smoke.  I can smell it a bit this morning, too. 

Visibility is down to a few miles in the haze this morning, and that state of affairs will probably continue all day.  Air quality is not great, that's for sure. 

So far, Vermont health officials have not declared any air quality alerts as of this writing at 7:30 a.m. Tuesday. But there were already pockets of Vermont where the air was considered "unhealthy for sensitive groups." 

To be on the safe side, I wouldn't exactly go outside and run a marathon today. You won't keel over if you do, as long as you're healthy to begin with. But it's probably not the most fantastic idea to breathe in all those tiny particulates from the smoke that will lodge in your lungs. 

Local  conditions can vary in these situations as well. Up in Montreal, Environment Canada has the air quality at a rather high risk.  There is actually a smog warning for poor air quality today in Montreal and much of the rest of Quebec.

We'll have to get used to hazy skies more often than not for the rest of the summer and much of the autumn, since the air usually comes generally from the west, where most of the fires are.  With climate change, huge western fires have become the new normal. Which means smoky haze across much of the nation is also the new normal. 

Luckily, most of the time, almost all the smoke is high overhead, so air quality for us breathing down here on terra firma don't have to worry too much about health effects. 

This time, however, a fair amount of smoke is near ground level. This will happen from time to time. This won't be the last occasion we have to deal with breathing smoke from distant fires.

Some showers, and possibly a couple of strong thunderstorms later today and this evening will probably help wash some of this pollution out of the air to make things improve at least somewhat overnight.