New York City awoke Friday to poor air quality as Canadian wildfire smoke continues to seep south and east across the US, but conditions should gradually improve over the weekend.
(Bloomberg) — New York City awoke Friday to poor air quality as Canadian wildfire smoke continues to seep south and east across the US, but conditions should gradually improve over the weekend.
At 5 a.m. local time the air quality in Manhattan was measured at 152, or “unhealthy,” with conditions forecast to get better later on Friday, according to AirNow.gov, a US government website. In addition to the smoke, there’s also some fog lingering in New York that’s making the skies look hazier.
“We do expect smoke in the area today,” said Jim Connolly, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Upton, Long Island. “It is not as dense as it was back when it was in Chicago and Minneapolis earlier this week and not as dense as it was earlier this month.”
Air quality alerts stretched from Wisconsin to Connecticut and south to North Carolina early Friday. In addition to New York, air quality is rated unhealthy in Washington, Cleveland, Toronto, Canada’s most populous city, and Ottawa. In Chicago, conditions were moderate as of 4 a.m. local time.
Across Canada, 497 fires are burning with 229 of them out of control, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre. So far this year, 3,053 fires have scorched about 31,274 square miles, an area about the same size as South Carolina. The smoke from the fires has drifted south, choking much of the Midwest and eastern US, including New York, Chicago and Washington raising health risks and disrupting transportation.
“The general trend should be better over the next couple of days,” said Rich Otto, a forecaster at the US Weather Prediction Center.
A weather system is set to move across the eastern US that will bring favorable winds and divert the smoke back into Canada or keep it there, Otto said. The smoke that’s already in the area, which raised conditions to unhealthy levels in Chicago earlier this week, will linger but “the concentrations will be less dense,” he said.
As the US and Canada move into their long holiday weekends, there will likely be some rain along the East Coast Saturday into Sunday, which could also help clean up the air.
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com
©2023 Bloomberg L.P.