Air Quality Still Crappy In Most Of U.S., Canada Including Vermont As Wildfires Rage

Wildfire smoke from Canada turned the setting sun over
Georgia, Vermont on Sunday into a weird, red dot.
The dot eventually disappeared in the smoke before
reaching the horizon. 

After choking our way through a smoky Sunday, we'll do the same today - here in Vermont and in huge swaths of the United States and Canada.  

Forests across much of Canada and parts or the United States West   are burning ferociously, having dried out in a long, and in many cases hot summer. 

In the Great Lakes and Northeast, and in central and southeast Canada,  the smoke is stuck beneath sprawling, stalled high pressure.  There's nothing coming along to produce a wind shift to flush the crud out.  

Instead, this week, we'll have to wait for the smoke particles to gradually precipitate out of the air to ever so slowly improve the air quality to something other than gross. 

If we eventually do see a change in the weather pattern, it could backfire. Perhaps weather fronts would grab new batches of smoke from the still-raging fires in central Canada and send them to populated areas.

Meanwhile, wildfires are increasing in the United States West, which are also starting to contribute to the bad air. This is turning out to be a rough month for those of us who like to breathe. 

For now, as of this Monday morning, air quality alerts are up in parts of Colorado, all of Wisconsin, Michigan and New York, and almost all of New England. Not to mention huge chunks of Canada. Major global cities in the top ten list of worst air this morning included Detroit, Michigan and Toronto and Montreal, Canada. 

VERMONT SMOKE/WEATHER

This morning's map from IQAir.com shows a band of
bad air across northern New England and southern
Quebec. Click on the image to make it 
bigger and easier to see. 

Here in Vermont, most of the state remains under an air quality alert. The alert that was to expire at midnight last night was extended to at least midnight tonight. 

Early this morning, Bennington and Windham counties were exempted, for now anyway, as the air is marginally cleaner there.

The air over the past couple of days hasn't been the worst it's been this year. We've had moments, like on July 26, where it was incredibly bad, much worse than it is now. But that's not exactly great news. Our latest batch of bad air is seemingly lasting forever. 

Since Saturday, the air has generally and persistently been in the orange "unhealthy for sensitive groups" category since Saturday.  Sometimes it flirts with the red, unhealthy for everybody zone. 

But really, even the unhealthy for sensitive groups doesn't mean the perfectly fine, fitness specimens among us aren't being affected. That persistence that's troubling. The longer you breathe bad air the worse it is for everybody. 

A weak cold front today and tonight won't do much to disperse the smoke.  If the cold front goes far enough south, the air near the Canadian border might temporarily get a little better. The center of strong high pressure in central and northern Quebec has - for now  - clean air under it, so some of that better air might sneak in late today before the smoke returns tonight.

SMOKE AS FOG MACHINE

This time of year, we often see early morning fog form in the valleys. The fog gets less and less likely the longer you've gone without rain. Except when there's smoke. In their forecast discussion,  National Weather Service/South Burlington meteorologist Tyler Danzig gave us an excellent explanation as to why smoke encourages morning fog:

"Canadian wildfire smoke is the culprit for fog development with all other signs pointing to no fog Increased cloud condensation nuclei from the smoke acts as a binding agent, similar to butter and eggs in cooking for water molecules. As it cools overnight, the can collect and condense the moisture more easily than normal air molecules, leading to enhanced fog development."

So yes, we're experience the joys of smoggy mornings lately. Get used to it, I guess. I expect more of this as long as the smoke lingers. 

REST OF THE WEATHER

Dry and warm with an increasing home grown fire danger is the story for the next week at least. 

That weak cold front coming through later today will stall across central New England and dissipate. It has almost no moisture to work with so don't expect any rain. For most of us. It might help squeeze out isolated showers and storms each afternoon today through Thursday,  mostly in the high elevations of southern and central Vermont.

These will produce little rain, and the vast majority of us will stay dry. This type of weather pattern makes me wonder about the risk of "dry lightning." That's from thunderstorms that produce little rain but do generate lightning strikes that can set forest fires. They're common in the West, but more rare here. But I can see that happening in this weather pattern.  

The wicked strong high pressure will keep deeply humid air at bay for most of the week, which would make forests dry out faster in Vermont than we usually see in August.  

The high pressure will also keep super hot weather away from us for the next few days. Daytime temperatures will be in the 80 to 85 degree range for most of us through Thursday, with lows fairly comfortable in the 55 to 62 degree range, give or take.

That's only slightly warmer than average for this time of year. Hotter, and maybe more humid air looks like it might start making a run at us toward Friday or the weekend. 

Oh, one more thing. It did not rain at all in Burlington this weekend. So the record for most consecutive weekend with precipitation stops at 32.  The last time before these past two days we had a rain or snow-free weekend was on December 14-15, 2024.