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| Brilliant deep blue skies over St. Albans, Vermont despite very warm, humid conditions. Haze has been nicely absent from Vermont skies so far this summer, |
This summer might be lazy and it sure is crazy, but in a big contrast to last summer, it's not so hazy.
Last year, we kept getting choked by wildfire smoke, mostly from Canada, which had by far its worse fire season on record.
This summer, Canada is mostly not burning. Their trademark refreshing summer cold fronts are not choking us in acrid haze this year. Instead, we have those lovely deep blue skies.
We tend to get hazier skies when it's hot and humid, but this summer, even those days have often brought brilliant blue sky affairs.
The Fourth of July this year was certainly on brand, as temperatures reached 90 and the humidity was up there, too. The sky, instead of hazy, was that gorgeous azure that almost made you forget the humidity. For a moment, anyway.
Meanwhile, the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation reported that the air quality was absolutely fine on Thursday. I'm sure it declined in the evening with all the fireworks displays, but you take what you can get.
This clear air has a psychological benefit, too. There's nothing more sublime than the blue skies and royal green landscape of Vermont in the summer. It's always disheartening for smoke and haze to interfere with that, so we've been lucky lately.
A little typical summer haze crept into the picture Friday, but it certainly wasn't' thick or anything out of the ordinary for a hot July day.
Bottom line: The hot spell haze of the early 1960s is at least partly missing. Not that anybody's complaining.
To be sure, we've had a few hazy days this year, but it is so nice to breathe sparkling fresh air. No doubt our lungs are thanking us profusely.
Enjoy it now, it'll probably get hazier and smokier as we go through the summer more on that in a minute.
SPARKLING SKIES
Credit the Clean Air Act and a relative lack of early season western wildfires this year for our food air.
The Clean Air Act has been working for decades now at improving our air quality. The amount of pollutants and haze in the air steadily decreased to around 2016, when it began to go up again due to more wildfires. Those wildfires were in part brought on by climate change.
Had it not been for those wildfires, we'd be enjoying the cleanest air in decades. Gone is the ozone pollution from factories and cars from the Midwest and further down the East Coast. Those air flows from the west and southwest bring our hottest weather to Vermont. In the 1960s and 1970s, that air brought ozone pollution and haze to partly obscure our Green Mountains during heat waves.
The air quality improved in the past three decades, decreasing the amount of haze we'd see in the summertime. However, in recent years, wildfire smoke has replaced the car and industry exhaust we used to see a half century ago.
We happen to be getting a break this year because the wildfires have been a bit tamer so far this summer than past years.
Especially in Canada.
Unfortunately, I don't think this fresh air is necessarily going to last. The western U.S. is now in the grip of a long lasting, record heat wave. The remaining moisture out there from a stormy winter of 2023-24 will rapidly evaporate, leading to the threat of major new wildfires.
They're already starting to break out this week. There are two dozen wildfires burning in California, with additional ones in Oregon, Washington and British Columbia, Canada. Those fires, and additional ones, are sure to grow in the heat wave, and that will eventually send smoke and haze our way.
If there's any good news for us, smoke from western fires tends to stay aloft more, limiting air quality problems on the ground. But those fires will at least occasionally turn our deep blue skies a disappointing slate blue/gray for the rest of the summer and into the autumn, probably.
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