Wildfires burning in Canada are sending plumes of smoke south, dramatically worsening the air quality for millions of people this week, including across New England
Haze cast a pall on Boston on Tuesday and blanketed New York City on Wednesday, producing some shocking images.
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Air quality remained bad enough on Wednesday in parts of New England to prompt a poor air quality alert for Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island.
The map below from the EPA shows current air quality conditions — on Wednesday afternoon, most of Massachusetts had air quality that was either moderate (in yellow) or unhealthy for sensitive groups (orange).
Most of Connecticut had unhealthy or very unhealthy air quality, though it didn't reach the hazardous distinction that New York City was dealing with. Northern New England, except for western Vermont, had good air quality.
"It's obviously concerning," said Dr. Jennifer Stowell from Boston University's School of Public Health. "The Northeast isn't used to being impacted by wildfire smoke to any significant degree."
Stowell, who studies the air quality from wildfires, says the particles in the skies are especially harmful for those with lung disease.
"Those particles are small enough to get down into the alveoli in our lungs and can start causing a lot of damage there," said Stowell. "Our bodies react with a lot of inflammation, which can harm the lungs."
"This is a climate change story," said Professor Juliette Rooney-Varga, the director of the UMass Lowell Climate Change Initiative.
She says the harmful impacts of wildfires will continue to grow unless the climate is stabilized and dangerous emissions are reduced substantially.
"The kinds of conditions that favor those wildfires are becoming more likely in a warming world," said Rooney-Varga. "Dry and windy conditions. We're seeing more intense droughts that create those dry and windy conditions, dry soil, dry air."
In the Boston area, a breeze Wednesday afternoon should improve the air quality.
Both the surface wind and the steering wind aloft driving the plumes of smoke are directly linked to a large, very slow storm that continues to be stalled over Nova Scotia. As bundles of energy wrap around the storm’s counter-clockwise flow of air, dropping south over New England, rounds of clouds and showers blossom in that atmospheric energy, which is why our First Alert Team expects morning sprinkles and afternoon scattered showers to continue as the theme Wednesday through Friday.
