The only respite much of the United States can hope for in the short term from the smoke from the wildfires in Canada are brief bouts of sweltering heat and humidity that already gripping southern states and forecasters say can be deadly.
And then the smoke is likely to return to the Midwest and East.
That’s because neither the 235 out-of-control Canadian wildfires nor the weather pattern that’s causing it all show any signs of abating in the next week or so, according to meteorologists with the Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Center for Weather Predictions. ).
First, the stationary weather pattern created abnormally hot and dry conditions for the fires on record in Canada, and then created a pattern in which the only relief comes when low-pressure systems pass through, meaning areas on one side they receive smoky air from the north and the other receives suffocating air from the south.
Smoke or heat. “Pick your poison,” said the forecast center’s chief of operations, Greg Carbin. “The conditions are not going to be very favourable.”
“As long as those fires are burning there, it’s going to be a problem for us,” Carbin said. “As long as there’s something to burn, there’s going to be smoke that we’re going to have to deal with.”
An example is Saint Louis. The city had two days of unhealthy air on Tuesday and Wednesday, but by this Thursday “you will have an improvement in air quality with the very hot and humid heat,” said meteorologist Bryan Jackson. The forecast is for temperatures that feel like 42.8 degrees Celsius, with 38.3 degrees Celsius hot and sweltering humidity.
On Wednesday, the low pressure system was parked over New England and because the winds are counterclockwise, areas to the west, such as Chicago and the Midwest, receive smoky northerly winds, while the Areas east of the low get warm winds from the south, Jackson said.
As that low-pressure system advances and another travels over the central Great Plains and Lake Superior, the Midwest gets temporary relief, Jackson said. But when the low pressure advances, the smoke returns.
“We have this carousel of air that goes around the Midwest, and from time to time it brings the smoke right into whatever city you live in,” said Liz Moyer, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Chicago. “And as the fires continue, you can expect to see these periodic days of bad air and the only relief is when the fires die down or the weather pattern disappears.”
The stationary pattern is “terribly unusual,” said NOAA’s Carbin, who had to search records as far back as 1980 to see anything remotely similar. “What bothers me is the persistence of all this.”
Why is the weather pattern stationary? This seems to be happening more frequently, and some scientists suggest that human-caused climate change is causing more situations where weather patterns become stagnant. Moyer and Carbin said it’s too early to tell if that’s the case.
But Carbin and Canadian fire scientist Mike Flannigan said there is a clear weather signal in the Canadian fires, and since those fires aren’t likely to go out anytime soon, nothing in the forecast seems likely to change.
Almost every province in Canada has fires burning. A record 80,000 square kilometers has burned, an area nearly as large as South Carolina, according to the Canadian government.
And fire season usually doesn’t start until July in Canada.
“It’s been a crazy year. It’s unusual to have the whole country on fire,” said Flannigan, a professor at Thompson Rivers University in British Columbia. “Usually it’s regional… not the whole lot at once.”
Warmer weather due to climate change means the atmosphere absorbs more moisture from plants, making them more likely to catch fire, burning faster and hotter.
“Fires are all about extremes,” Flannigan said.
And where there is fire, there is smoke.
Both very hot and smoky conditions are stressors on the human body and can present potential health challenges, explained Ed Avol, a professor emeritus at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine.
However, he added that while the haze of wildfire smoke provides a visual cue to stay inside, there may be hidden dangers of breathing in harmful pollutants such as ozone, even when skies appear clear.
He also noted that there are changes in air chemistry that can occur in favor of wildfire smoke, which may have additional, lesser-known impacts on the body.
It’s still only June. The seasonal forecast for the rest of Canada’s summer “is hot and mostly dry” and that’s not good for putting out fires, Flannigan said. “It’s a crazy year and I’m not sure where it’s going to end.”
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