Smoke from Canadian fires darkens New York and puts the Northeastern United States on alert | climate and environment

The silhouette of the World Trade Center, in lower Manhattan, enveloped this Tuesday in smoke from Canada.Mike Segar (Reuters)

Thick smoke from fires in Canada, combined with a strong burning smell, prematurely darkened New York and much of the northeastern United States on Tuesday. Visibility in the Big Apple is almost completely reduced (it is impossible to peek at landmarks as representative of the top of the Empire State Building, they are always visible), while the sky has taken on a yellowish tint, typical of sandstorms at other latitudes. The New York State Department of the Environment issued a bad air quality alert, effective through at least midnight Wednesday, as social media caught fire with shots of the city engulfed in smoke.

Meteorological authorities have warned that people most sensitive to poor air quality, such as lung and heart patients, children and the elderly, should limit their outdoor activities. He reminded New York Mayor Eric Adams on Twitter of the need to cut exposure to “what is absolutely necessary” in the case of patients with heart or lung disease. Similar alerts are in effect in some counties in Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont.

The day dawned in the Big Apple with light rain, followed by clear and sunny, until early afternoon the sky was bright as the calendar prepares to reach the summer solstice, and with it the longest days of the year, cast a coppery yellow, dotted with red in parts of the city . Visibility from the bridges connecting New Jersey and its twin states, as well as Manhattan with Brooklyn and Queens, was almost non-existent in the middle of the afternoon, emerging among the haze and haze on windy days.

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According to the Canadian Interagency Wildfire Center, there were more than 400 active wildfires in Canada as of Tuesday, adding to an already intense fire season that is expected to worsen. The agency reported that more than 200 fires were out of control. As of Monday, more than 26,000 Canadians have been evacuated from their homes because of the fires.

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This isn’t the first time that smoke from Canadian fires has reached the northeastern United States, but it is the first day that smoke from Canadian fires has been seen. Sites that use interactive cameras, such as EarthCam, have been posting surreal images all afternoon, cutting out the silhouette of New York skyscrapers, which are well known skyline, being cut off by fog. If on ordinary days a radius of several kilometers can be seen from any high vantage point, this Tuesday over New York the blindness has disappeared.

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Sacha Woodward

"Wannabe writer. Lifelong problem solver. Gamer. Incurable web guru. Professional music lover."

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