Smoky air returning to New York, north-east US after a brief reprieve
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By late Saturday afternoon, New York weather was hazy with a mix of moderate to good air quality.
PHOTO: BLOOMBERG
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NEW YORK – Smoke from the worst wildfires in Canadian history
By late Saturday afternoon, New York was hazy
That is a change from Saturday morning when the sky was sunny and good air stretched from Philadelphia to Maine.
Shifting wind patterns were driving smoke north as hundreds of blazes continued to burn in Canada.
“As long as those fires are burning, they’ll continue to generate smoke,” Mr Dominic Ramunni, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s office in Upton, New York, said by phone on Saturday.
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.
The hazy conditions around the north-east will last into Sunday, and perhaps linger for a few more days, forecasters predicted.
But it will not be nearly as bad as earlier, when the smoke was so thick that New York skyscrapers 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 Atlantic coast is starting to break up. That zone had parked itself for days, channelling winds that delivered the smoke directly to New York and the Mid-Atlantic, said Mr Zack Taylor, a meteorologist with the US Weather Prediction Centre in College Park, Maryland.
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,” Mr Taylor said. “Definitely things have improved on the East Coast. Most of the smoke has dispersed.”
BLOOMBERG
