Green Mountains Of Vermont To Often Fade Behind A Smoky Haze For The Rest Of Summer. A Climate Change Story

Smoke obscures the view along Lake Champlain 
last summer, July 26, 2025.

Vermont's first air quality alert of the summer went into effect this past Sunday. Thankfully, the bad air didn't turn out to be quite as bad as feared.  

The wildfire smoke that was approaching the state from southern Quebec dissipated more and sooner than expected, leaving us with relatively safe air, although it was kind of hazy. 

Get used to the haze. It's going to be with us much of the rest of the summer. And probably the first half of autumn. 

I'm sure we will see more air quality alerts before mountains snows in Canada and the West finally snuff out the fires. 

Huge wildfires are burning in the U.S. West. There's an enormous cluster of fires burning west of Hudson Bay, Canada. More fires are raging in northern Canada. All that smoke has to go somewhere. 

Often, that pollution will end up in the eastern United States, including here in Vermont.  That fact is always a bummer for me. 

During June, North American wildfires were not especially extensive. Which left us with plenty of days in which we could gaze out at the Green Mountains of Vermont and they were.....green.  Luscious, rich, elegant, gorgeous green as far as the eyes could see. All this under a deep, pure blue sky flecked with puffy white clouds. You know, the iconic view of a Vermont summer.  

Those days of clear air will now become much fewer and further between for the rest of the summer.  

Until recent years, wildfire smoke in Vermont hadn't been a thing. Back in the 1950s, 60s and 70s, we did had a lot of "Those Lazy, Hazy, Crazy Days of Summer," as Nat King Cole sang in a 1963 hit. Especially haze. That was mostly ickiness from auto exhaust and factory smokestacks to Vermont's south and west during mid-20th century heat waves. 

The Clean Air Act removed a lot of the haze. Not all of it, but it was an improvement. Then, in the past decade or so,  wildfires around the world, including in North American started getting worse. The hotter world dries out the forests earlier in the spring than they once did. Those forests keep getting more and more parched as sumner goes on.    

So, many of the forests went poof.   

Forest fires now burn more than twice as much tree cover as they did two decades ago, according to University of Maryland researchers. 

All those fires spew smoke, obviously. Per-person exposure to wildlife smoke in the United States was four times higher during 2020-24 on average each year, than during 2006-2019, according to Climate Central. 

The haze from these huge fires often ends up engulfing much if not all of the United States, including here in Vermont. 

Summertime air quality alerts in the Green Mountain State used to be a rarity.  But that's changed. Most recent summers have featured many hazy, acrid days. A few days in the summer nowadays are actually dangerously polluted. 

Even if the pollution isn't enough to prompt those alerts in our climate changed world, the smoke spoils the view.  The mountains, especially those in the distance, fade into a bluish, grayish murk. Some days, the smoke is high overhead, so the mountains still looks vivid and green. But the sky overhead is depressing. Instead of a deep blue, it's an almost colorless, weak =pale grey-blue. 

That looks like Vermont's future for the rest of the summer.  

That's not to say every day will feature haze. Air currents can still thread the needle between the wildfires and the smoky areas to deliver delightfully clear, refreshing air. Or, on some days, the smoke will be thin enough to be just an accent, giving the mountains just an added shade of blue mixed with the green. 

At least the sunrises and sunsets will be more spectacular as the smoke brings out the reds and oranges in the clouds. 

As I write this Wednesday morning, the sky overhead is blue enough, but the distant Adirondacks are barely visible through an off-blue haze the color of exhaust from a malfunctioning 1970s-era Buick.  

Climate change isn't only about heat waves and weird weather. It chips away at our health, our atmosphere, our way of life, our well being.  I just wish the Powers That Be would recognize that when they complain about a lousy view of the mountains during their Vermont summer vacations