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.

Canadian Wildfire Season Mercifully Ends After Unprecedented Burn Year

Chart shows the monthly trend line in acreage burned in
Canadian wildfires. Pink line is 2023. All the
other lines are yearly fire activity since 2000,

 Winter has pretty much set in for most of Canada, so after so many months of conflagrations, the nation isn't burning anymore.  

You've noticed the change here in Vermont. This November, whenever the wind shifts into the north, we don't get wildfire smoke anymore. That's definitely a change from what we experienced from May to early October.  And it's fortunate, since winds have been from the north and northwest most of this month. 

The Canadian fire stats are pretty wild, per the Washington Post:

"About 45.7 million acres have burned in 2023, surpassing the previous high of 17.5 million acres based on records dating back to 1983, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Center." 

The total acreage burned is about the same as the annual totals from 2015 to 2022 combined. If all the burned land was combined, it would entirely cover North Dakota, with about 200,000 additional acres in say, South Dakota.

Obviously, Canada is a huge nation. As such, you'd normally expect in any given year that parts of Canada might be hot and dry, while others would be cool and wet. Somehow, almost all of Canada managed to be hot and dry by their standards for much of the year. 

On the west coast, British Columbia saw 7 million acres burn this year, which is more than double the previous record. In eastern Canada, 12.8 acres burned in Quebec, also double the previous record for that province. 

In small sized Nova Scotia, 62,000 acres burned, which was six times the old record.

Some of the fire-ravaged areas also experienced extreme weather whiplash.  Parts of Nova Scotia were devastated by fires in May. Those same areas endured severe flooding in July and August. 

Traffic makes its way along Interstate 89
in Georgia, Vermont on June 25 through smoke and haze from
Canadian wildfires. Canada had by far its worst 
fire season on record. 

It's hard to say whether fires are a steeply accelerating crisis in Canada. We know that trend in wildfires has been increasing in the (former) Great White North, as the nation has turned warmer and sometimes drier with climate change. 

However, 2023 was simply unimaginable, until it happened.

I have to wonder whether 2024 will be a bad year, too.  El Nino is in full force, which tends to make Canada as a whole warmer and drier than usual. Combined with climate change, it could be another bad year. 

Another bad fire year in Canada would of course be bad for the United States, too.  Vast areas of the continental U.S. choked on repeated smoke and pollution episodes from those Canadian fires. That surely had health effects for millions of people. 

Thankfully, right now, most of Canada is snow covered, and will remain that way through at least March and much of April, 2024.  The first fires of the season in Canada usually start in May and taper off in September. 

Does Cleaner Air Create More Hurricanes?

Hurricanes Irma and Jose in the Atlantic Ocean in 2017. Less
pollution due to the Clean Air Act seems to be one reason
hurricanes are increasing in the Atlantic Ocean

We should all love the Clean Air Act 

It was enacted in 1963 and amended numerous times since.  It has made the air in and near the United States a lot easier to breathe over the past several decades. I don't know how many lives the Act saved due to the fact that it created much safer air. I bet it's a lot of people, though. 

Just as every cloud has a silver lining, almost every good thing has a dark side. One consequence of the Clean Air Act is it might be encouraging extra hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean. 

As AccuWeather reports, the key here is particulates, also known as aerosols, which is a mix of fine dust and tiny liquid droplets.

Some of this gunk in the air is natural stuff, made up of sand blowing from deserts, smoke from distance wildfires or volcanoes, or maybe sea salt. 

A lot of other particulates come from us as we blast down the highway in our SUVs, or we allow stuff to belch from factories, houses and buildings.  Things like catalytic converters in vehicles, scrubbers on smokestacks and other devices the Clean Air Act demands have gotten rid of much of those aerosols. 

Which of course air blowing over the Atlantic from the United States has a lot less particulates than it did decades ago.

The cleaner air is teaming up with climate change to make oceans warmer. When there was more pollution in the air, it blocked some sunlight from reaching all the way down to the Earth's surface. Now, with less crap in the air, the sun shines brighter and hotter on the oceans, making them heat up more efficiently. 

Hotter oceans mean more potential fuel for tropical storms and hurricanes. A storm that might not have been able to get its act together decades ago because of cool ocean water can now gain strength from that hotter H20.

The lead author of the study, released in May is Hiro Murakami, a scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Geophysical Fluid Dynamic Laboratory. He described to CNN the Clean Air Act and its effects on hurricanes this way:  

Decreased aerosol pollution is akin to quitting smoking. If you quit smoking, you're much healthier. Less pollution increases the health of the general population. However, there are side effects to quitting smoking, such as weight gain and stress. Those problems aren't as bad as smoking, overall. The increased hurricane activity is sort of like the comparatively small side effects of quitting smoking.

Hurricanes are deadly. Pollution is deadlier. 

Meanwhile, tropical cyclones in the western Pacific are decreasing in number. In that part of the world, hurricanes are known as typhoons. They remain frequent and fierce there, more so than in the Atlantic. But we have seen a decreasing trend in the annual number of typhoons and tropical storms along and off the Asian coast. 

Industrialization in China and India has boomed tremendously over the last half century.  That means more particulates, which are shading the western Pacific a bit.  The particulate pollution has caused many deaths and often leads to economic disruptions in India, China and other Asian nations. That has led the nations to begin enforcing some serious anti-pollution regulations. 

Researchers caution that decreased particular pollution is only one factor that seems to be increasing hurricanes and tropical storms in the Atlantic. 

According to AccuWeather:

"Murakami predicts in the next decade, increased greenhouse gases will significantly influence tropical cyclones compared to human-caused particulate air pollution."

The good scientist elaborated further for CNN: "Climate science is very complex and it's a work on progress, especially for hurricane activity....What we saw in the past 40 years may not be applied to the future, so we may see something much different."

Great. More climate surprises loom.  

Will Olympic Athletes Choke On Foul Beijing Air? Some Officials Worry

Officials are worried about air pollution in and near 
Beijing during the upcoming Winter Olympics next month.

On top of everything else to worry about with the upcoming star-crossed Winter Olympics - Covid, China's government, etc there's another potential problem: nasty air pollution.  

As the Washington Post notes:

"With less than two weeks to go  until the Opening Ceremonies of the Beijing Winter Olympics, the Chinese government said is battling 'extremely unfavorable' weather to clear the city's skies of hazardous smog."  

Air quality in Beijing has a reputation of being lousy, especially in the winter, when temperature inversions trap pollutants over the city.

An inversion is a layer of relatively warm air over a layer of colder air at the surface. The inversion acrs as a lid, preventing pollutants from blowing away and dispersing. 

The Chinese government has been working for months, even years, to find ways to minimize the winter pollution in time for the Olympics.

Agence France-Presse reports:

"In an attempt to clear the smoggy skies, steel plants around the city were ordered to cut production in half in August and coal stoves in 25 million households across northern China were replaced with gas or electric burners ahead of the Games."

Fine particulates which can cause problems ranging from heart attacks to lung cancer to premature babies, was at 33 micrograms per cubic meter of air last year.. That's down by a third from 2013 but still about six times higher than levels recommended by the World Health Organization, notes Agence France-Presse. 

Fossil fuels are of course a huge source of the problem in China.  Almost 60 percent of China's economy is powered by coal.  China has also seen surges in fossil fuel imports and mining to combat power shortages that have dampened factory output and the overall economy.  

The immediate weather forecast is not terribly encouraging. Conditions favoring a temperature inversion are expected to intensify as we approach the end of the month. Chinese celebrate Lunar New Year's Eve on January 31 with fireworks, which would certainly worsen the pollution in Beijing. 

The Olympics are scheduled to run from February 4 to 20. 

 

The Smoke Is Back; Then It Gets Really Chilly For July/August

A small thunderstorm erupts amid smoky haze last evening
looking east from St. Albans, Vermont. The smoke is even
thicker today, prompting air quality worries.

UPDATE: 10:35 a.m:

As expected, an Air Quality Alert is now in effect for the northern half of Vermont due to all that wildfire smoke in the air. 

Southern Vermont isn't in the alert, but they are borderline, just short of the levels needed to trigger the alert.

No guarantees, but it looks like the air quality MIGHT slowly start to improve later in the day.

The Air Quality Alert is in effect until 11 pm. tonight

PREVIOUS DISCUSSION: Once again today, we'll be breathing air that isn't really all that great for you today here in Vermont and the rest of New England. 

Another batch of wildfire smoke has descended upon us, and it's about as bad as the last outbreak nearly a week ago that prompted air quality alerts.

Chances are they'll issue another such alert today.  The National Weather Service in South Burlington say they'll be coordinating with the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation later this morning to make that determination.

Already, at dawn, the air quality index was nearing 150.  That's unhealthy for sensitive groups. Anything at or above 151 is unhealthy for everyone. 

It was quite hazy early this morning at dawn, and I got a couple whiffs of smoke in the air once again here in St. Albans.  If anything the smoke and haze could thicken up a little more by this afternoon. 

The air should start to improve by tomorrow, as the wind takes on a more northwesterly flow.  That will introduce us to, well, basically autumn.  Or at least a preview of it. I know, already, right?!?!

Another "heat dome" is setting up in the western and central United States.  This ridge of hot high pressure will keep things sweltering for most of the western two thirds of the United States.

The WCAX web cam showed  thick haze and smoke in 
Rutland, Vermont this morning. Smoke from Canadian
wild fires is causing air pollution concerns in Vermont today.

This heat dome is pushing the jet stream northward well into Canada in the middle of the continent. 

That in turn, will be making that same jet stream curve southward through Ontario, Quebec and down into New England.  

The result will be frequent cold fronts, and shots of chilly Canadian air. Each front will be accompanied by showers, but since the air source is kind of dry, each shot of rain won't amount to all that much. 

It should be at least 80 degrees by day this time of year and near 60 at night.  We have a long period of time coming up that will be colder than that, at times much chillier than those normal summertime readings. 

After some possible 80 degree readings today, and maybe in the southern parts of Vermont tomorrow, daytimes will stay in the 70s or even cooler than that at least through next Sunday and probably beyond. 

Nights will be cool, too, getting down into the 40s and 50s every day. If there are any clear, calm nights thrown into the mix, I wouldn't be surprised to see a couple 30s show up in the coldest hollows.

We think of cool summer weather as featuring clean Canadian air, but that won't necessarily be the case. Despite the air flow from Canada, there will still be bouts of haze and wildfire smoke here in Vermont over the next week because of wildfires burning in parts of central Canada. 

Report: Vermont Among U.S. Places With Cleanest Air

A blue sky day with very clean air in St. Albans, Vermont
last summer. Vermont had some of the least 
polluted air in the nation, according to a recent report
from the American Lung Association.

 Breathe free, my fellow Vermonters. 

The American Lung Association says that at least in 2020, the Burlington, Vermont metropolitan area was among the five cities with the least air pollution. 

This from a report  from the American Lung Association's annual national air quality report card called "State Of The Air."

The report looks at trends in air pollution nationally, and drills down to look at where pollution is at its worst, and where the air is relatively clean. 

The Association says it uses the most recent air pollution data compiled by the Environmental Protection Agency for the two most widespread types of pollution -- ozone and particle pollution.  Ozone is basically smog and particle pollution is basically tiny bits of soot floating around in the air. 

Data from air quality monitors is a big part of what goes into this report. 

The top five metro areas in the United States for clean air were listed alphabetically, not by rank. They are Burlington/South Burlington, Vermont, Charlottesville, Virginia, Elmira/Corning, New York, Honolulu, Hawaii and Wilmington, North Carolina. 

My guess is Vermont is lightly populated, so there's not a lot of cars and factories to belch stuff into the air. The wind often comes from the direction of Hudson Bay or thereabouts, and the air up in central Canada tends to be clean.  And Vermont generally has pretty good pollution regulations. 

That's not to say we don't have pollution.  Especially in the winter, particulates get stuck under inversions in valleys, causing some bouts of bad air. 

According to State of the Air, most of the worst cities for ozone and particulate pollution were in California. 

Some other takeaways from the report:

More than 40 percent of Americans or over 135 million people live in places with unhealthy levels of ozone or particle pollution.

People of color are more than three times as likely as others to be living in places with polluted air. 

One bit of good news is 14.8 million people lived in areas with heavy air pollution in 2020 than the year before. Most of that was due to a decrease in ozone pollution. My speculation is that the pandemic caused less driving due to all those lockdowns. Vehicles cause the bulk of ozone pollution so this makes sense to me. 

More info from the report:

"Los Angeles remains the city with the worst ozone pollution in the nation, as it has for all but one of the 22 years tracked by the "State of the Air" report.  Fairbanks, Alaska earned the unfortunate distinction of being the metropolitan area with the worst short-term particle pollution for the first time. And Bakersfield, California returned to the most polluted slot for year-round particle pollution for the second year in a row."

Now that the economy is recovering, and the pandemic will hopefully wane later this year, I'm guessing there will be a lot more vehicle traffic on the roads.  That will probably increase ozone pollution this year. 

I also wonder if wildfire smoke has increased particulate pollution in recent years.  There's an intensifying drought in much of the West, which experts say could well lead to a very bad wildfire season this summer and fall.

Time will tell. 

 

Sally To Drown Gulf Coast; Elsewhere, Sunny Sept. Day Shrouded In Smoke

We'll start today with the dangerous first, then follow up with the sad and dismaying. I'm a bucket of cheer this morning aren't I?  

Satellite view of Hurricane Sally
Tuesday morning

So, Hurricane Sally continues its slow motion march toward the Gulf of Mexico. It's barely off the southeastern tip of Louisiana this morning, but it will take another 24 hours to make it to the coast, probably somewhere in or near Mississippi. 

Its forward speed is slower than most people can walk. 

That's why everybody is so worried about Hurricane Sally. Top winds are 85 mph, and not expected to weaken much before landfall. Which means this won't be the most powerful hurricane ever to hit the Gulf Coast, at least in terms of wind. 

The fact that the hurricane is almost sitting in one place is causing cooler water to upwell from deeper in the Gulf of Mexico.   The cooler water is helping to squelch the storm's development. Hurricanes thrive on very warm water.  Guesses are the winds with Sally are at their peak now and won't get much stronger. 

But the wind still isn't the problem with this one.  The slow movement of the storm will allow the storm surge to keep piling up along the Gulf Coast. On Monday, two days before Sally is set to make landfall, there was already some storm surge flooding. 

The biggest problem with Sally will be the rain, as has been advertised for days now. There was already a feeder band of torrential rain set up and slamming into the Gulf Coast in northwest Florida and southern Alabama. This rain band is soon to hit southern Mississippi. 

The Mobile, Alabama National Weather Service office, among others, is warning of historic flooding along and just inland from the Gulf.  Ten to 20 inches of rain is expected, with local amounts to 30 inches.  That is almost sure to cause record flooding along some rivers and low lying areas. 

There's a lot of other tropical systems in the Atlantic at the moment. This really busy hurricane season is peaking.  None of the systems, other than Sally, are an immediate threat to land, so I'll skip them for now. 

SMOKY SKIES ALMOST NATIONWIDE

Normally I love September mornings like this one.  It was almost chilly enough to frost at my place in St. Albans, Vermont. Some areas of Vermont did have frost. 

All that orange and red in this map 
represents a LOT of smoke aloft
across much of the nation. 

Usually, this type of weather has deep blue skies crystal clear visibility and a bright sun. 

Not this time.  The sky is a sick yellowish gray. The sunshine is a weak, sickly orange.  You see a little haze agains the mountains in the distance instead of the sharp outlines of the hills and mountains you usually see in this weather. 

This is all a thick plume of smoke coming from the massive western forest fires. This pall of smoke extends all the way across the nation, from California to Maine and well beyond. It's not just here. 

The bit of haze you see against the mountains is particulates from the smoke precipitating out. It's not enough to prompt air pollution alerts and it's not thick enough to be especially dangerous. But still.

I hate to complain, when people are losing their homes and even lives in these wildfires. But the smoky skies when we should have clear blue conditions makes me a little sad and angry, let me tell you. 

Climate change influenced these fires and made them worse than they otherwise would be. The smoke overhead is not dangerous to us Vermonters, but it does affect us. Just another example of how climate change will continue to make quality of life diminish.