Poor air quality
Millions of people are under air quality alerts today as Canadian wildfire smoke billows into the US again. Several areas are seeing decreased visibility, including Chicago, Detroit, New York, St. Louis, Cedar Rapids and Cleveland. The entire state of New York is also under an air quality health advisory due to smoke from wildfires in Western Canada. Forecasts show winds will continue to push the smoke eastward, bringing a smoky haze to other parts of the Northeast early this week. Meteorologists expect parts of the US will be at risk of smoke for the foreseeable future as Canada experiences its worst fire season on record. More than 24 million acres have burned in Canada this year, an area that is roughly the size of Indiana.
In the picture below: Smoke rises from the Texas Creek wildfire south of Lillooet, British Columbia, Canada, on July 9. Source: CNN
This appears to have gone on for a very long time. I attempted to google when this fire started, but no such information online. Strange. What I did find, which is even stranger is that the same thing seems to have happened in a number of prior years. Even stranger is that in light of the huge threat to health, apparently fire departments in both Canada and US (equally affected) apparently aren't able to put it out, or even reduce it in size. Why?
