Hazardous Wildfire Smoke: Looking Back, Forward

NEW YORK — One year after acrid, toxic smoke from wildfires in Canada blew into the United States, the National Weather Service has issued a review of June 7, 2023, when the most significant near-surface smoke and very unhealthy and even hazardous air quality was observed.

"Visibility dropped as low as one half of a mile in places from Washington, D.C., to New York City. It is uncommon for visibility to drop so low due to smoke from wildfires located at such a great distance," the NWS reminded online readers. "Tens of millions of people were under air quality alerts from June 6th through June 7th, and the issuance of a dense smoke advisory was also needed across the near-shore waters."

SEE: When Will The Smoke Clear From Long Island And The Hudson Valley?

The event was accompanied by severe weather in Westchester and Nassau counties, the NWS pointed out. A heat inversion and a low pressure system helped push the smoke southward due to its counter-clockwise rotation and led to localized severe weather including hail with diameters between 1.00 and 1.25 inches.

Air quality alerts are triggered by a number of factors, including the detection of fine-particle pollution — known as “PM 2.5” — which can irritate the lungs. Based on available research, AccuWeather estimated at the time that breathing the polluted air in the worst affected areas of the Northeast for several hours could result in breathing in the same level of harmful air as smoking 5-10 cigarettes.

See below for the time-lapse video the NWS New York NY office created and tweeted out.

So far the 2024 wildfire season has not been as explosive.

However, "Although AccuWeather meteorologists are not expecting a record-shattering season, it may still bring air quality risks similar to what was experienced last year across the continent," Brian Lada, AccuWeather meteorologist and staff writer said in April.

Then in May, smoke from the fires wafting down into the northern tier of U.S. states triggered air quality alerts in Minnesota and Wisconsin.

As of the end of May, there had been 1,295 Canadian fires in 2024, fewer than the 1,527 10-year-average. As of June 7, most Canadian wildfires were in the British Columbia and Quebec provinces, according to Natural Resources Canada. Of 90 active Canadian wildfires, 13 were labeled as “out of control,” according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Center.

As of June 7, there were 102 active wildfires in the United States, including five uncontained large fires, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.

However, wildfires and wildfire smoke in the South and in Mexico are causing problems to the south, according to the U.S. fire and smoke map.

Below are three things to know:

‘Zombie Fires’ Burned Through Winter

Canada’s 2023 wildfire season, the most destructive on record with 6,551 fires scorching nearly 71,000 square miles of land from the Pacific to the Atlantic coasts, never really ended during a record-warm winter, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Center.
Some of the fires, including some in British Columbia, have been smoldering since last year. Canada’s 2023 wildfire season never really came to an end during the winter. Embers from so-called “zombie fires” continued to burn under the snow, with clouds of white smoke flowing from the ground.

It’s not uncommon for a few fires to overwinter, and British Columbia normally has about half a dozen that survive the season. However, there were 106 active zombie fires in January and 91 were still burning by spring, raising concern among scientists about the upcoming wildfire season.
“This continued smoldering through the winter, I think, is very alarming to see,” Jennifer Baltzer, a professor of biology at Wilfrid Laurier University and the Canada Research Chair in Forests and Global Change, told BBC.

Generally, Canada’s wildfire season runs from May to September, “but our first did not stop burning in 2023,” Baltzer told CBC, Canada’s public broadcasting service. “Our fires went underground, and have been burning pretty much all winter.”

Could 2024 Be A Repeat?

Experts are divided on whether the wildfire season will be as extreme this year as it was in 2023.
Mike Flannigan, a professor of wildland fire at Thompson Rivers University in British Columbia, told USA Today it’s “extremely unlikely that the 2024 fire season will be as extreme as 2023, as 2023 was a record-smashing year.”

“The impacts of climate change are arriving faster than predicted, and alongside the task force, we are supporting the wildland firefighters who work tirelessly to protect us under the most extreme conditions,” Bruce Ralston, Canada’s Minister of Forests, said in a statement in May.

You Haven’t Seen (Or Smelled) Anything Yet

Wildfire smoke is common in California and the Pacific Northwest and does drift across other states, but for the most part, Americans living outside wildfire-prone areas haven’t given a lot of thought to air quality indexes, or AQIs, Jeremy Porter, head of Climate Implications research for the climate data provider First Street Foundation, told ABC News in May.

“All of a sudden, it’s on the news. Every day, the weatherman is putting the AQI up at the beginning of the day; we became really familiar with an issue that people in the West have been dealing with for decades,” Porter said.

Air quality warnings are expected to become more commonplace, putting about 125 million Americans at risk by mid-century, according to a study published in February by the First Street Foundation.

Right now some 83 million Americans, more than 25 percent of the population, are exposed every year to AQIs that are considered “unhealthy” by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Among those people, nearly 10 million are at risk of exposure to “very unhealthy” AQIs and 1.5 million may experience “hazardous” AQIs. The severity of air quality is designated by color, with the unhealthiest air assigned red, purple and maroon colors.

Over the next 30 years, the population exposed to “unhealthy” red days could increase by 51 percent, while the population exposed to “very unhealthy” purple days and “hazardous” maroon days could increase by 13 percent and 17 percent, respectively.

Porter told ABC that, despite progress due to the Clean Air Act, wildfires are “wiping away 20 years of air quality improvements.”

“It’s a little bit disheartening to see that sort of shift, in this statistical trend,” Porter said. “We’re now seeing air quality worsen over time with more pollution in the air.”

Patch Editor Beth Dalbey contributed to this report.