People up and down the Eastern Seaboard awoke to hazy skies Tuesday, with the culprit once again being wildfire smoke from Canada in what has been a historic and abnormally long-lasting season.
The smoke drifted as far as South Florida, compromising air quality in one of the few places in the eastern United States that had — until now — avoided it. Much of the peninsula observed code orange or code red air quality Tuesday morning, according to AirNow.gov, the air monitoring website run by the Environmental Protection Agency. Code orange signifies unhealthy levels of smoke pollution for sensitive groups, while code red is unhealthy for everyone.
Both Orlando and Jacksonville observed code red levels, which extended as far south as Palm Beach County. Skies were even obscured in a milky haze into Miami and Homestead.
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Lesser but still noticeable areas of smoke hovered over the northeast and Mid-Atlantic, the highest smoke concentrations near the coast and Interstate 95 corridor.
A long journey
Most of this smoke came from Canada’s west following the rapid expansion of firestorms during the last ten days of September. The smoke arrived in the eastern United States after a long, winding journey that resulted from complicated atmospheric steering currents.
Last week, a weather pattern known as an omega block became established over central North America, featuring a sprawling zone of high pressure. Low pressure flanked that high pressure zone to both the east and west.
Clockwise winds around the high pressure system blew from the west and southwest, pushing smoke in western Canada across northern Canada and Greenland. Then, low pressure east of the high pressure over the northwest Atlantic was able to grab that smoke and pull it southward.
Florida smoke
The smoke reached Florida on Monday, which is as far south as smoke has made it this year.
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When the National Weather Service in Melbourne, Fla. asked residents on X, formerly known as Twitter, if they noticed the smoke, follower @MP_NHxpat replied: “We can smell it on the Treasure Coast.”
Share this articleShareCode red readings started showing up on air quality sensors around Jacksonville late Monday night. Similar levels were recorded from Orlando to Delray Beach to near Lake Okeechobee. Code orange levels were observed over a much broader area, including Tampa, Sarasota, Naples and Fort Lauderdale.
While smoke concentrations were probably highest on Tuesday morning, additional haze may continue to pass overhead for the next few days.
Northeast smoke
Varying levels of wildfires smoke has passed over the northeast for about a week.
Skies were hazy Tuesday morning in the coastal northeast, including the area from New York City to Washington. Most of this smoke has been suspended high enough in the air not to affect air quality, but low levels of pollution were observed around New York City.
Wildfire smoke thickened up enough late last week to produce spotty code orange conditions in parts of Quebec and New England. On Friday, Auclair, to the north of the Maine border in eastern Quebec, recorded a full-day of code red levels.
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Before reaching the northeast, smoke was thick enough to darken skies in parts of Greenland and Atlantic Canada.
The never-ending fire season
Canada’s fire season is typically easing in September and over by October. But the last two weeks produced a particularly intense period of fire activity. About a million acres burned, which is comparable to entire seasons in some years.
Hundreds of fires remain active in provinces from western Canada to Quebec. Wetter conditions in the west in recent days have helped decrease its extreme fire risk and lowered the number of out-of-control blazes. However, warm, dry conditions, conducive to fires, are forecast to return in the coming days.
Meanwhile, record high temperatures in Ontario and Quebec may exacerbate ongoing fires near James Bay and elsewhere in the east before cooler and wetter weather finally sweeps in by the weekend.
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