Clear Skies in North America

[Kilgallb]

Anyone got a clear, not smoky sky for more than a day or two this summer?

I am in Alberta and BC. Everyday is Smokey.

 

[BAC1967]

I’m near Seattle, we’ve had great air quality so far this spring and summer. We did have a few days of smoke from Canada last week. Mostly we’ve had an onshore breeze off the Pacific which gives us great air quality.

 

[abruzzi]

no problems down here near the mexico border

 

[Dusty Negative]

The smoke from the great white north is making the skies in the US mid-Atlantic greatly grey. Luckily it rains a fair amount here so that clears things up a bit.

 

[Roger Thoms]

We’ve had mostly clear weather where I‘m at near Flagstaff, Az, had some clouds today, actually got out and photographed a bit today. No smoke, but it’s been windy and there’s been haze from the dust.

Roger

 

[mshchem]

It's better here in Iowa USA. We had the worse air quality index ever recorded a couple weeks back. It was spooky. Smoky f8 days. We had some hot weather, still dryer than usual. These fires are cataclysmic!

 

[eli griggs]

Go West young man!

 

[Don_ih]

About right now:

Pretty easy to see why it would be smoky in BC and Alberta. It hasn't been bad here in a while. There is a persistent haze, though, that is normally not there at all.

 

[Rick A]

We've had quite a few days of cruddy skies in southwestern Pa. thanks to our neighbors to the north. Yeah, I'm talking about you Canada. It's played hell on my asthma.

 

[jeffreyg]

If you don’t mind hot and humid and an occasional afternoon rain come down to sunny south Florida. Good air quality, beaches and fishing if you’re inclined.

 

[benjiboy]

Don't ask me , I live in the industrial North Of England where the air quality is so good that we are constantly awakened in the morning with the dawn chorus of the birds caughing

 

[GregY]

I'm an hour west of the OP in the mountains and in general it's been clearer than many recent summers. The fires are largely to the north and the typical SW flow keeps things clear. It was only last month when we had a northerly flow that the air was smoky for a number of days in a row.

 

[Cholentpot]

The smoke from the great white north is making the skies in the US mid-Atlantic greatly grey. Luckily it rains a fair amount here so that clears things up a bit.

The rain did nothing to clear out the smoke in NE Ohio. The smoke was higher than the rainclouds it seems.

It's clear now but we had some bad days for a bit.

 

[MurrayMinchin]

On BC's north coast, weather systems typically come from the Pacific Ocean where fire activity hasn't been a problem to date. Regional fires haven't choked things up much, so far this year.

We were boating on the central coast several years ago during a 'heat dome' intensified fire season in BC's interior...sunrises were amazing.

Drove north out of Kelowna past fires in the Okanagan and near 100 Mile House a couple summers ago. Disconcerting when the midday sun diminishes to a dull orange orb, disappears altogether, then ash and small bits of debris start hitting the windshield and flames twice as tall as the forest start appearing in the distance. They closed the highway about a half hour after we snuck through.

 

[Vaughn]

Mellow here in Northwestern CA so far.

 

[Sirius Glass]

When I saw that the sky was clear this morning and I could not see or taste the air, I thought that I was suffocating!

 

[Tom Taylor]

The astronomy community uses this for forecasting the sky cover 4 days out.

 

[MurrayMinchin]

Speaking of far reaching forest fire smoke...about 15 years ago north coast BC was blanketed in smoky haze from forest fires in Siberia.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Here in CA we had the worst smoke anywhere about three year in a row. But this past year has been exceptionally wet, fire monitoring and response time has been seriously upgraded due to that Purgatory learning curve, and so far this season, we've had a lot of blue sky, that is, once the coastal fog burns off in afternoons, and with the exception of inland farm areas where agricultural burning was permitted earlier in the season.

Much of the mountains are still under deep snow, so perhaps we'll be off the hook for awhile, at least in the central portion of the State. SoCal is under different circumstances, and potentially also some of the middle-northern forest corridor around the Trinity Alps, where it didn't catastrophically burn yet.

benji mentioned birds "caughing". Well, back a few years ago when we were literally coughing all the time, the darn crows started imitating the same sound, as if mocking us. Meanwhile, the birds officially named mocking birds were imitating car alarms.

 

[Sirius Glass]

…

benji mentioned birds "caughing". Well, back a few years ago when we were literally coughing all the time, the darn crows started imitating the same sound, as if mocking us. Meanwhile, the birds officially named mocking birds were imitating car alarms.

While growing up a cat in my neighbor had recovered from a cold, flu, pnuemomia ... and lived for years with a hard cough. So day or night and it was scarier at night the cat would come up behind people silently and the suddenly cough. Turn around and no one is there! Look around staring into the dark and just when one would relax the cat would cough again! SPOOKY!!

 

[Dusty Negative]

The rain did nothing to clear out the smoke in NE Ohio. The smoke was higher than the rainclouds it seems.

It's clear now but we had some bad days for a bit.

I truly hope this is not the “new normal.”

 

[DREW WILEY]

The "new normal" is Abnormal. If it sets you mind at ease to say it won't stay the same, so be it. But the correct interpretation of that, by almost any realistic climate assessment going forward, is that such conditions will accelerate and only get progressively worse. That doesn't necessarily mean every year will have the same ill symptoms, but that overall, droughts, fires, floods, hurricanes, etc, will get more frequent and more extreme. And it's now worldwide. Pandora's box is not only open, but has its lid torn clear off.

So if hoping to travel, always have alternate Plans A,B,C,D ... because things can change quickly. And the smoke form big fires is one of the most frustrating things to deal with because it can spread so far and wide. It was always a routine factor when going to the high country in summer. If one high basin or pass was affected by smoke from down below, you simply chose another route instead. But with today's multiple mega-fires, half a continent or more can become miserable at the same time, with no place left to hide.

 

[eli griggs]

Fires of wide proportion are nothing new, it's natural and even pre Columbian Indians certainly had their share, but, by stoping forest and grassland fires, we have allowed the natural clean up of tinder prone lands, to be broken, and in doing so, making the fires we now have, hotter, more easily started and more intense in many areas.

We've done this and it's going to stay bad for the foreseeable future.


Historically, it'd be interesting to see how the founders of Jamestown and St. Augustine delt and wrote about the fires and smoke of the five hundred years drought that was in it's waning years when they settled the East Coast?

 

[Cholentpot]

I truly hope this is not the “new normal.”

Nah.

There's usually forest fires in Canada but the wind patterns carry them out to the Atlantic where it doesn't affect anyone. We had a different pattern this year, likely due to El Nino and it coincided with some fires.

Call be a heathen and denier but I'm not worried. It's a cleaner world than the one my Father and Grandfather grew up in. I have a coal chute in my home as do my neighbors. Imagine millions of people burning coal to heat their homes. I'd think that was worse than driving cars. Down to basic cleanliness, go figure how many horses were in NYC at the turn of last century and wonder where all that manure and the corpses went.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Well, at least you can blame all that coal burning ever since the start of the Industrial Revolution for much of what is happening now. But don't blame the horses, who didn't even need catalytic converters. And as far as smelly things getting squished under dainty ladies' shoes - what is crushing of the divets after a polo match all about?

There is a fascinating little coal mining area not far from here, a real photographic treat, where Welsh miners came over and dug tunnels, and even personal dwelling caves in the hills, from around 1880 until the 1920's, supplying coal to San Francisco. Otherwise, it's a pretty rare commodity on our West Coast per se. Lots of it in Utah and Wyoming, and of course, further east in West Virginia and Kentucky.