Forecasters say the only respite the US may soon expect from eye-watering plumes of smoke billowing from fire-ravaged Canada is the shirt-soaking sweltering heat and humidity from a southern heat wave that has previously It has proved fatal ever since.
And then the smoke will likely move back into the Midwest and East.
That’s because according to meteorologists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Weather Prediction Center, neither the 235 out-of-control Canadian wildfires nor the weather patterns responsible for this flurry of seasonal diseases are expected to subside for the next week or more. are showing signs of being. ,
First, stalled weather patterns caused unusually hot and dry conditions for Canada to burn at off-the-charts record levels. It then created a setup where relief comes only when low-pressure systems move in, which means areas on one side get smoky air from the north and warm air from the south on the other.
smoke or heat. “Pick your poison,” said Greg Corbin, head of forecasting operations at the Prediction Center. “The conditions are not going to be very favorable.”
“As long as the fire continues to burn there, it’s going to be a problem for us,” Carbin said. “As long as there is something to burn, there will be smoke we have to deal with.”
Take St. Louis. The city had two days of unhealthy air on Tuesday and Wednesday, said Brian Jackson, a meteorologist with the Weather Prediction Center, but on Thursday “they will get an improvement in air quality with a very hot and humid summer.” The forecast is for a temperature that feels like 109 degrees (42.8 °C) – 101 degrees (38.3 °C) with heat and stifling humidity.
On Wednesday, the low pressure system stood over New England and because the winds move counterclockwise, areas to the west — such as Chicago and the Midwest — received smoky winds from the north, while areas east of the low pressure received warm southern air, Jackson said.
As that low pressure system moves on and another system passes over the central Great Plains and Lake Superior, the Midwest gets temporary relief, Jackson said. But when the low pressure runs out the smoke comes back.
“We have this carousel of wind spinning around the Midwest, and occasionally it’s bringing smog directly to 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 periodic bad windy days and the only respite is when the fires die out or when the weather patterns clear up.”
The stalled weather pattern is “extremely unusual,” said NOAA’s Carbin, who had to look back into the 1980s record to see anything even remotely similar. “Its tenacity is what inspires me.”
Why is the weather pattern stuck? This is happening more often – and some scientists suggest that human-caused climate change is causing more situations where weather patterns stop. Moyer and Carbin said it is too early to say whether this is the case.
But Carbin and Canadian fire scientist Mike Flanigan said there is a clear climate signal in the Canadian fires. And while those fires aren’t likely to die out anytime soon, he said, there’s nothing in the forecast that looks likely to change.
Fires are burning in almost every province in Canada. According to the Canadian government, a record 30,000 square miles (80,000 square kilometers) have burned, an area almost as large as South Carolina.
And fire season in Canada doesn’t usually last until July.
“It’s been a crazy year. “It’s unusual for fires to occur across the country,” said Flanigan, a professor at Thompson Rivers University in British Columbia. “Usually it’s regional … not the whole shebang at once.”
The warmer than normal and drier air made for ideal fire weather, Flanigan said. Warmer weather due to climate change means the atmosphere sucks more moisture out of plants, making them more likely to catch fire, burn faster and heat up more.
“Fire happens at extremes,” he said.
And where there’s fire, there’s smoke.
Both extreme heat and smoke conditions cause stress on the body and may present potential challenges to human health, said Ed Avol, professor emeritus at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine.
But Avol said that while the haze of wildfire smoke provides a visual indication of staying inside, there can be hidden dangers of breathing in harmful pollutants like ozone even when skies are clear. They also noted that there are changes in air chemistry that can occur in wind direction due to wildfire smoke, which may have additional and less well-understood effects on the body.
It is only June now. The weather forecast for the rest of the summer in Canada is “hot and mostly dry,” Flanigan said, and that doesn’t bode well for firefighting. “It’s been a crazy year and I’m not sure where it will end.”
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Associated Press reporter Melina Walling contributed from Chicago.
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