Canada had 857 active wildfires on Thursday, and the smoke they pushed south was forcing air quality alerts across multiple US states. In large parts of Michigan, Minneapolis and Minnesota, the US Air Quality Index program said conditions were hazardous, and people were being told to stay indoors.
The search interest around Goes 19 is easy to understand: the smoke is not staying north of the border. NOAA said alerts stretched across the Upper Midwest, the Great Lakes region and the Northeast on Thursday, turning what might have seemed like a regional fire story into a wider public health problem for the US. Twenty-three new fires were reported the same day, adding to a crisis already large enough to affect daily life far from the flames.
The biggest source of the smoke is a large cluster of fires in western Ontario, where thick plumes are moving across Thunder Bay and Toronto. Lower concentrations are drifting over the Great Lakes and above New York, where hazy skies and redder sunrises and sunsets are likely. IQAir ranked Detroit as the worst city in the world for air quality, with Minneapolis second and Toronto third, a stark measure of how far the smoke has spread.
What makes the forecast uneasy is that the air is not expected to clear quickly. Northwesterly winds are set to keep driving smoke into northern US states for the rest of this week and into the weekend, and thunderstorms in Ontario are expected over the next few days but may not do much to change that. The rain may interrupt some of the smoke, but not enough to break the pattern on its own.
By Sunday, smoke may drift into New Jersey, where the World Cup final is due to take place. By Monday, the wind is expected to turn, steering smoke across Quebec and improving air quality further south in the US. Until that shift arrives, the practical answer for many people in the northern US is simple: the hazardous air is here now, and for some places it will stay that way through the weekend.
