Why The Sky Looks Hazy

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This is Meteor Moderator Steve Pelletier, and I am the weatherman. You take a look outside right now. You can see that hazy, smoky look to the sky here in the mid-Atlantic in the northeast. Well, it's all because of the Canadian wildfires.

How Boreal Forests Turn To Tinder

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Every summer, Canada's boreal forest, one of the largest continuous forests on Earth, become a tinderbox. It starts with a setup. Warm, dry spring, strips moisture from the dead needles, grasses, and peat, priming the

Human Sparks And Dry Lightning

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fuel load. Then come the ignition sources. Roughly half of Canadian wildfires start from human activity. Discarded cigarette, an escaped campfire, sparks from equipment, but the big ones, the ones that blow up into megafires, well, they're usually lit by dry lightning. Thunderstorms that produce strikes, but little or no rain, often riding along stalled ridge of high pressure.

Fires That Create Their Own Weather

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Now, once a fire takes hold in that continuous fool bed, it can generate its own weather. Intense heat lofts a column of smoke and ash so violently it forms a pyrocumulus cloud, essentially a thunderstorm made of fire, which can punch smoke directly into the stratosphere.

Why Smoke Changes Sun And Color

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That's the mechanism behind what people thousands of miles away actually see, like around our area. Smoke particles scatter sunlight, so at the source, skies turn orange red, and the sun looks like a dim red disk. Further downstream, say over our area or even over Europe, the plume thins into a high altitude haze. Sunlight still gets through, but it gets filtered through fine particles, producing a milky sky, muted colors, and vivid deep red sunrises and sunsets. Even when the air smells clean and the surface air quality seems normal.

Climate Effects And How Fires End

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The aerosols also have a measurable climate signal that reflect incoming solar radiation, producing a short-term regional cooling effect, while black carbon deposit on distant snowpacks can accelerate the melt, making things even worse. Now, fires like these typically end one of three ways: a shift in the jet stream, bringing a cold front and a soaking rain, or the season just goes on, and then fuel simply runs out at a natural break, like a lake or a rock barren. Or most often, firefighters achieve containment along control lines before the next dry spell reignites the risk. Well, that's a look at Canadian Wildfires. So why it looks so smoky out there right now.

Local Forecast And Sign Off

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If the sun does get through, we'll see temperatures back up to around 90 degrees today or even higher. Look like we do have a couple of cool fronts moving down out of the northwest over the next several days. That'll bring us some scattered showers and thunderstorms, and maybe some slightly cooler weather, but still a little bit above normal as we head towards the end of the weekend and into early next week. I'm Edimonter, Steve Pelletier, and I am the weatherman. Have a good day today. Talk to your first thing tomorrow. See you then.