Canadian wildfire smoke blankets northeast with smog.

 

The Statue of Liberty cloaked with smog. BBC. 

Smoke from Canada's massive wildfires has blanketed the northeast of America with smog, raising fears about health. BBC. New York is passing out N95 masks, not for coronavirus, but to filter out the smog. Much of the smoke is coming from the Canadian province of Quebec, where the majority of fires are. The fire season is already the worst the province has seen. Millions of Americans are now under air quality warnings and the smog is creating eerie scenes throughout the northwest. The air is a threat to people with respiratory problems. Canada had a very warm and dry spring which is driving the wildfires. 

My Comment:

The Northeast is now dealing with the same problem the Upper Midwest has had to deal with for awhile now. I don't think it was quite this bad in Northeast Wisconsin last week, but it was still pretty bad. We were under the same kind of air quality alert that much of the northeast is dealing with right now. 

I do sympathize with them. Even though I stayed mostly inside during the air quality alert I had several coughing fits because of the bad air. It didn't help that this is pollen season as well, so it was not a good time. The air quality has since improved here, probably because the winds blew all this crap to the east. 

Not helping things is how dry this spring/early summer has been so dry. Not only would a big rainstorm help put out the fires in Canada, it could take a lot of the smoke out of the air. Locally we are supposed to have storms this weekend, but I don't know if that will help out Canada or the northeast. 

I actually do think that masks would help in this case. Smoke particles are a lot larger than virus particles and even a cloth mask should be able to catch many of them. A N95 mask would do even better. That's what these masks were made for and I would consider wearing one myself if I had to go outside. 

I am betting at least some of these fires were set deliberately. Most were probably caused by natural causes like lightning or accidentally caused by people. But I would not be surprised if some of this was arson. The media is downplaying the possibility but it's very likely that at least some of the fires were deliberately set.