Canadian smoke

“On a clear day, you can see forever” as the popular song goes. Maybe not forever, but looking to the south, we can see the New York City skyline from the top of Bear Mountain. That’s a visiblilty of over 40 miles. Today, the sky is covered in a brownish haze as we are being blanketed with smoke coming all the way across the country from Canadian forest fires.

This map was downloaded from the Wildland Fire Iteragency Geospatial Service and shows just how widespread and numerous the wildfires are in Canada this week. Notice also how the western half of the United States is also being affected by wildfire. The prevailing winds, however, are from the northwest today and the huge volume of smoke being produced by the Canadian fires is being carried down over the northeastern United States. In spite of the fact that we are well over 1000 miles from many of these fires, we are being subjected to dangerous air quality conditions throughout our section of New York. The Department of Health stated today that being out in New York City today would be like smoking 7 cigarettes in a day.

The two images below show what the view from our annual hawkwatch site, Bear Mountain, appears during a normal summer day and how it looks today.

This is the view looking to the south from our vantage point atop Bear Mountain in SE New York State. We can see our neighboring state of Connecticut in the distance. This photo was taken almost one year ago.

And here is the same view I had today. This is not cloud cover nor is it fog. This is smoke covering the landscape of almost a thousand miles away. Fortunately for us, the wind patterns are supposed to change in the next several days and give us some relief. The fires are nowhere near under control, however, so if the northwest winds return, we will be subject to these conditions once again.

Many scientists believe that the recent weather anomalies which have led to disastrous fires in the west are the result of our changing climate. Higher average temperatures and drought conditions naturally lead to drier windier meteorological conditions, so as long as the climate continues to be affected by the actions of mankind, we can expect to see this type of phenomenon occurring more and more as a “normal” state of affairs.