New York will give Canada forest smoke for days, weather watch | World news
The US Northeast, including New York City, will continue to breathe in smoke from fires across eastern Canada for the next few days, raising health alerts across affected areas.
While there may be showers in New York City on Wednesday, the smoke will likely linger, said John Cristantello, National Weather Service meteorologist. “Rain can do a lot,” he said. “The biggest thing is the amount of smoke and the big flames.”
The air quality alerts extend across Quebec and Ontario, including Montreal, Toronto and Ottawa, and from New York and New England to South Carolina in the US.
New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy warned residents in his state to be careful outside, especially vulnerable individuals including the young, elderly and those with heart or lung disease. “Make no mistake, from forest fires in Canada to those growing with increasing frequency and severity in our own backyards, these extreme weather events are tangible — and devastating — evidence of the climate crisis that has is increasing,” he said. New York schools have canceled outdoor activities and Mayor Eric Adams urged residents to limit their time outside as smoke from forest fires across Quebec continues to pour south. A thick trough is moving across New York City and into the city, Tom Kines, a meteorologist at business forecaster AccuWeather Inc. “Their air quality will get worse,” he said. “We have at least three more days of this.”
While primarily to blame for the fires moving across Quebec, a low-pressure system lingering in Nova Scotia is providing a mechanism to spread that smoke across southeastern Ontario and into New York and the US East Coast, Bann said. . Low pressure systems rotate clockwise in the northwest, which means the wind blows from north to south at the edge of the fires.
“Cool isn’t coming anytime soon,” said Richard Bann, a forecaster at the U.S. National Weather Service, a division of the National Weather Service. “For the time being the Northeast US is in a position where it will continue to ebb and flow with the thickness and intensity of the smoke.”
Across Canada, as of Tuesday, 423 fires were burning, according to the Interagency Forestry Fire Service. In all 2,305 fires have destroyed four million hectares across the country. Air quality in New York is hovering at unhealthy levels, according to IQAir, a pollution mapping tool. The city currently ranks 168 on a scale of 0 to 500 with a high of 222 at night. As bad as that is, the Canadian capital Ottawa has reached 471, meaning the conditions are dangerous. Things got even worse in Kingston, Ontario to the south where the reading hit 475 at 7 am
In addition to the threat in Canada, dry conditions and high winds keep the fire danger high in the US Mid-Atlantic, Bann said. While fire warnings have not yet been issued, it may only be a matter of time, he added. In other weather news today: China: Sweltering temperatures across China are killing livestock and straining power grids , an early heat wave that represents another summer of disruption for Asia’s industry and food supply.
India: India’s monsoon will begin in 48 hours after the cyclone that caused the delay of the important weather event for the economy.
Europe: The warmest temperatures of the Nordic region and the continent will last next week, with normal-normal levels dominating the south, according to Maxar Technologies forecast.
