Wildfire Smoke Heads East After Air Quality Plummets in the Midwest
Chicago and Detroit were the major cities with the worst air quality in the world Tuesday afternoon, according to IQAir, as skies over the Midwestern U.S. were filled with wildfire smoke from Canada. Photo: Jamie Kelter Davis/Bloomberg News By Alyssa Lukpat June 28, 2023 11:53 am ET Smoke from Canadian wildfires blanketed Chicago and other parts of the Midwest for a second day Wednesday and moved toward the East Coast, which is bracing for another round of haze. Southern winds carried Canadian smoke back into the U.S., generating some of the worst air qualit
Chicago and Detroit were the major cities with the worst air quality in the world Tuesday afternoon, according to IQAir, as skies over the Midwestern U.S. were filled with wildfire smoke from Canada. Photo: Jamie Kelter Davis/Bloomberg News
Smoke from Canadian wildfires blanketed Chicago and other parts of the Midwest for a second day Wednesday and moved toward the East Coast, which is bracing for another round of haze.
Southern winds carried Canadian smoke back into the U.S., generating some of the worst air quality in the world in Chicago, Detroit and Minneapolis, according to the air-quality information platform IQAir.
The smoke also pushed into the upper reaches of the South Wednesday, with unhealthy air in places including Louisville, Ky., according to AirNow, a government tracking site.
Millions of Midwesterners and some Southerners were adjusting to daily life under polluted skies while officials asked people to limit their time outside. Those parts of the country largely avoided the first round of smoke that turned skies orange in parts of the East earlier this month.
The smoke is expected to return to parts of the East Coast Wednesday and Thursday. AirNow has forecast the air quality won’t be hazardous this time like it was in New York, Philadelphia and other cities earlier this month. Still, much of the East is expected to have unhealthy or moderate air quality when the smoke arrives.
Haze from Canadian wildfires blankets downtown Pittsburgh on Wednesday.
Photo: Benjamin B. Braun/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette/Associated Press
Officials measure air conditions using the air-quality index, which classifies air on a scale from good (0-50) to hazardous (301 and higher). The air quality in some Eastern cities at times this month surpassed 400, meaning there were a hazardous number of small particles in the air that doctors said could pose a health risk. Most of the Midwest on Wednesday morning had unhealthy or very unhealthy air quality, according to AirNow.
Canada’s wildfire season is off to one of its worst starts ever, with more than 480 active blazes across the country, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre.
Millions of acres have burned in Canada because of a recent dry spell. Climate scientists said a high-pressure ridge parked itself over much of Canada this spring and blocked rain from falling, turning forests into tinder.
The scientists said the Canadian fires would likely continue until the rain returns, meaning that the U.S. could be in for a smoky summer even though there have been fewer U.S. wildfires this year than normal, according to the U.S. National Interagency Fire Center.
The National Interagency Fire Center said it is abnormally dry in parts of Mexico, too, where several large fires are burning.
Write to Alyssa Lukpat at [email protected]
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