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Hazy skies in the Northeast from Canadian smoke persist

Wildfire haze.
Max Schulte
/
WXXI
Wildfire haze.

Air quality alerts are in effect in Connecticut and New York due to smoke and haze from wildfires in Canada.

Over 100 wildfires are burning throughout Quebec and Ontario. Combined with an upper-level low pressure system over Nova Scotia, Canada is on track to its worst wildfire season on record.

WSHU's Sabrina Garone spoke with Jase Bernhardt, a Hofstra University meteorologist and professor about the declining air quality in the Northeast. He said our region saw the worst of it Wednesday afternoon, but it’s hard to predict when skies will look normal again. 

WSHU: What starts a wildfire, and why have these been able to spread as much as they have?

JB: As people might be aware, it's been a pretty dry May and June so far in the Northeast. And that's extended up into Canada where these wildfires are starting. So, certainly when it's dry that can set the fuel up, and then the spark for wildfires could be a variety of things. You could have, unfortunately arson sometimes, it could be a lightning strike. It could be incidental, like a discarded cigarette. But you really need the dry conditions, and that's what we've been seeing. Usually it's not this dry so early in the growing season.

WSHU: With climate change, is this something you think we could be seeing more frequently?

JB: In the eastern U.S., it's tough to say. In the western U.S., there are some studies showing it's been drying out there, there's been more droughts and therefore more wildfires have been occurring. In the eastern U.S., this is so unprecedented that it's hard to say for sure that there's a trend in this. It's so unique what's happened here this week.

WSHU: How come some parts of our region look drastically different than others? For example, we've had hazy skies over our Fairfield station, but a few towns over looked less dramatic.

JB: Plumes of smoke rise up from multiple wildfires, get high up in the atmosphere, and then get transported by the wind. The wind is blowing it straight north to south. Since Quebec, where most of the fires are, is directly north of us, it's blowing straight towards New York. The heart of the plume is maybe a couple hundred miles across, so if you're right on the plume it looks really bad. New York is on the edge of the worst of it. New York City, it's worst just to the west. So western Long Island is probably worse than eastern Long Island. That's why further out in Suffolk and eastern New England, they're probably missing it.

WSHU: When can we expect skies to look a little more normal?

JB: It's hard to say exactly. The worst of it happens to be over in New York right now (Wednesday afternoon). Thursday, it could be bad again. Hopefully not as bad, but it'll still be the same wind direction of the fires burning. By this weekend, the winds should start the shift. Early next week we're expecting rain which should help put some of the fires out.

WSHU: How concerned should Long Island and Connecticut residents be about air quality? And when skies begin to look clearer, should we still be concerned about persisting particulate matter?

JB: For now, it's best to stay indoors as much as possible. But if you're a healthy person and you breathe it in for five minutes, you're not going to die! You can think about it like smoking cigarettes; the more you breathe it in the more likely you are to develop respiratory illness, so it can build up over time. Fortunately for us in this region, this is very anomalous. That's why it's in the news. So once this goes away, things will be fine. It's not like we're going to be stuck with this forever.

Sabrina is host and producer of WSHU’s daily podcast After All Things. She also produces the climate podcast Higher Ground and other long-form news and music programs at the station. Sabrina spent two years as a WSHU fellow, working as a reporter and assisting with production of The Full Story.