Smoky air from the worst fires in Canadian history will be returning to New York City and the US Northeast on Saturday afternoon following a brief reprieve of clear skies and clean air. But experts say the next round won’t be as severe.
(Bloomberg) — Smoky air from the worst fires in Canadian history will be returning to New York City and the US Northeast on Saturday afternoon following a brief reprieve of clear skies and clean air. But experts say the next round won’t be as severe.
Air quality levels showed mostly good conditions from Philadelphia to Maine as of Saturday morning, according to AirNow.gov. However, shifting wind patterns have been driving smoke north from hundreds of blazes continuing to burn in Canada. By 1:30 pm in New York the good conditions had given way to moderate conditions stretching from Newark, New Jersey, to Florida and across much of the eastern half of the US.
“If the fires are still burning, it can come back,” Jim Connolly, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s office in Upton, New York, said by phone Saturday. “The smoke is just getting moved around. It’s not like it disappeared.
Wildfires and their toxic fallout have become routine in parts of Asia and the US West Coast, and scientists say they will become more familiar every year as climate change drives up wildfire frequency and intensity.
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Smoky conditions are expected to re-settle over the New York area late Saturday night and into Sunday, Connolly said. However, the air quality won’t be nearly as bad as recent days, when the haze was so thick that buildings seemed to disappear into the gloom and so many people stayed home that restaurants and bars closed early for lack of customers.
The big change is that a low-pressure zone off the Northeast coast is starting to break up. That zone had parked itself for days, channeling winds that delivered the smoke directly to New York and the Mid-Atlantic, said Zack Taylor, a meteorologist with the US Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland.
Read More: Canada’s Wildfires Expose the Climate Change ‘Spiral of Silence’
As the low pressure area starts to disperse, the winds are fanning out in more directions, spreading the smoke across a wider area.
“We might still have to deal with some bouts of smoke,” Taylor said. “Definitely things have improved on the East Coast. Most of the smoke has dispersed.”
–With assistance from Brian K. Sullivan.
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