Bigger Wildfires Making Air Pollution Worse. Latest Victim: Sydney, Australia

In this image from CNN, the famed Sydney Opera House is barely
visible amid clouds of choking wildfire smoke in the city this week.

Today, here in Vermont, we will be treated to northwest breezes that will pump in chilly but very clean and fresh air from central Canada.

We're lucky, especially if you compare us to, say Sydney, Australia in recent days.

Destructive and very, very big wildfires continue to burn in Australia, and that will continue through their summer, as it appears now.

Some of the big fires are near Sydney, and smoke from those fires is choking this iconic Australian city in a thick, dangerous haze.  In some parts of the city, pollution levels were five times higher than the level considered hazardous, says the Sydney Morning Herald.

That newspaper also reported that there were 150 ambulance calls Monday for people with breathing problems, ferry service was shut down due to poor visibility, and outdoor venues such as swimming pools were closed because the city didn't want people exercising in the pollution.

Firefighters were responding to four times the usual number of false alarms because the smoke was so thick it was seeping into buildings and triggering smoke alarms, the Sydney Morning Herald reported. 

It's early in the summer fire season in Australia and already more than 720 homes have been lost. Officials are warning of exponentially greater losses as the fires chew their way into more populated areas later this summer.

And most of that time, this choking, dangerous smog from the fires will linger over some Australian cities, like Sydney.

This is not a problem limited to Australia. It's a world-wide issue

According to Outside, the bigger wildfires are starting to erase the big gains the United States has made since the 1970s.

There are all kinds of laws and improved emission systems for all kind of vehicles, homes, factories, buildings - what have you. Cities that were routinely smoggy in the 1960s and 1970s routinely have clean air.

However, the wildfires, now getting bigger, hotter, more long lasting and numerous in large part due to climate change, are spewing huge amounts of particulates and other pollution into the atmosphere.

During the worst of the wildfires, weather patterns and winds move the smoke and pollutants into big cities and small towns often hundreds of miles distant from the fires, leading to dangerous spikes in bad air quality.

San Francisco was shrouded in serious haze back in October. Other western North American cities, like Salt Lake City, Seattle and Vancouver, British Columbia, have had very serious smoke attacks from wildfires in recent years.

These outbreaks of thick haze are dangerous for everybody, causing lung damage and cardiovascular injury.  People who already have health issues could be hospitalized, or even die. And it's going to get worse.

Says Outside:

"While the U.S. has done a lot to limite particulate matter from burning fossil fuels, the country is still spewing a lot of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, which is speeding climate change. That, in turn make wildfires more severe."

To be Captain Obvious here, more severe wildfires mean a lot more smoke pumping into the atmosphere and often traveling long distances.

Don't think for a minute we Vermonters are immune from this wildfire pollution.  You know those fresh, clean northwest breezes I referred to at the top of this post?

Those northwest breezes are not necessarily so fresh in the summer and early autumn. There's been an uptick in wildfires in the northern forests of Canada and even up in the Arctic.  Some of that smoke blows down into the Green Mountain State.

I'm not sure on the statistics, but my perception is certainly that we've had more smoky, hazy and icky summer and early autumn days due to those fires hundreds or even thousands of miles to our north and west.

Wildfire smoke is not just an immediate danger to Sydney, Australia, It appears it will be an increasing threat to all of us.

Siberian Fires Are Another Climate Change Worry

Forests in Siberia are burning at unprecedented rates this summer,
causing all kinds of ecological havoc. Photo from Tass via Getty Images

Yesterday, I talked about the big meltdown going on across Greenland's ice sheet, which is of course bad news.

Today, more bad news. As you might have heard in some news reports, there are huge, HUGE wildfires going on in Siberia.

Why should we care, you might ask. Hardly anybody lives there, and it's so far away. It's not impacting our lives, is it?

Well, short term it's affecting our lives a little, and long term, is contributing to bigger problems associated with climate change.

So far, according to Vox, 15,000 square miles of Siberia have gone up in flames this year. That's about the size of Maryland.

Smoke from the fires is choking nearby cities, causing health problems for many. The smoke is circling much of the Northern Hemisphere. Here in Vermont, we can all agree that Friday was a gorgeous day: Clear skies, warm sun, low humidity, a perfect beach day. But did you notice the sort of hazy quality to the sky? It wasn't exactly a robin egg blue. More of an ashy color.

Most of that haze was caused by smoke from Siberia.

That haze contains little particles of soot that are raining down everywhere. Right here in Vermont, it's not a big deal, because there's too little of it to be much of a threat to anything.

But some of the soot is coming down on what's left of the Arctic ice this year, on the Greenland ice caps and glaciers throughout places like Canada, the Arctic and Europe.  The soot darkens the ice. Pure white ice deflects sunlight. Darker ice draws in the sun's warmth, leading to faster melting.

The soot will always be there. So, if pure white snow falls on top during the winter, that's a good thing. Unless all that snow melts next summer and the sooty snow is exposed to the sun again. That means faster melting next year, and years to come, too.

The fires are contributing to likely further increases in global temperatures, too. Smithsonianmag.com reports that wildfires across the Arctic belched 50 megatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in June alone. That's about the same as Sweden's total annual carbon emissions.

Some of the fires are burning in Arctic peat bogs. Normally, they are wet and help contain the spread of fires. But early snow melt and hotter summer temperatures have led the peat to start burning as well. Peat contains carbon that's been stored there for decades or centuries. The peat fires are releasing that stored carbon into the atmosphere, as Smithsonian notes. 

It's a viscious loop.  Warming contributes to more Arctic fires. Those Arctic fires warm the atmosphere more, leading to even drier, hotter conditions up there, leading to more fires, more warmth, etc. etc.

As Vox notes, there are wildfires in Siberia every year.  But the fires this year, and in recent years, have been bigger and badder than in the past.

OK, have a cheered you up yet?

Yet Another Smoke Attack In New England As Canada Burns Once Again

A hazy sunset caused by Canadian forest fires, as seen
from St. Albans last summer. Haze and smoke attacks
in Vermon from Canadian fires seem to be on the
uptick in recent uears. 

The brilliant blue skies we enjoyed here in Vermont Sunday and Monday, and on into Tuesday morning faded into a sickly greyish color Tuesday afternoon as smoke from Canadian wildfires billowed high overhead.

The haze is still there this morning, at least to an extent, and could get worse again this afternoon.

Most of the smoke is high overhead, but you might have noticed the horizontal view Tuesday afternoon got a bit hazy, too. That was basically fallout - tiny smoke particles drifting back to Earth. That's how these smoke plumes eventually dissipate.

The trouble is the fires keep burning, so smoke keeps going up, and it perpetuates itself.

These tiny particles in the haze aren't exactly healthy to breathe. There wasn't enough haze and pollution yesterday in Vermont to cause any particular health risks. Today, it's possible that enough smoke could reach the surface to bother people with underlying health risks, so we should keep an eye on that.

You might even smell smoke at times today. Don't worry, it's not your house burning. Or maybe worry, because Canada is burning.

Obviously not all of it.  Extensive fires in Ontario have led to widespread smoke in the Midwest and eastern United States.  Other fires in western Alaska are choking that region in smoke as well.

In this air quality forecast for today from the EPA, the
air won't exactly be clean. Areas in yellow have moderate
amounts of particulates. Though not at super hazardous
levels, people with underlying health issues might
want to avoid overexerting outdoors today.
Especially since it will also be very warm.

Extreme dryness, warm air and severe thunderstorms with lots of dry lightning have sparked most of those large Canadian wildfires.

It does seem these "smoke attacks" here in Vermont and the rest of the United States are getting more frequent.

Which makes sense, since Canadian and western United States wildfires have trended upward in size and intensity in recent years.

 Climate change might well be influencing this. In Canada, warmer weather allows things to dry out earlier in the spring, extending the wildfire season.

Hotter, drier weather than in the past and lots of lightning strikes in the summer are fueling these fires.

For selfish reason, that's a shame. We often get breaks in summer heat and humidity via cold fronts from Canada, which gives us the perfect blue skies like we saw this past Sunday.

But now, Canada seems to give us smoke and haze, too. I want the blue sky back.

Here We Go Again: Distant Wildfire Smoke Hazing Up Our Skies

Smoke from wildfires in Alberta gave a brassy hue to
the evening skies over St. Albans, Vermont Thursday. 

Did it seem hazy to you here in Vermont yesterday afternoon?

You were on to something. Smoke from wildfires in Alberta was high overhead, introducing yet another summer in which clear blue skies are marred by smoke.

To be fair, Thursday wouldn't have been a pure bluebird sky day anyway. High and mid level clouds were coming in ahead of a cold front that was to our north and a storm system scooting by to our south.

But smoky haze gave a brassy hue to the atmosphere, especially yesterday evening. With a northwest flow aloft occasionally coming through over the next week, I wouldn't be surprised if we have other hazy days.

It still seems sort of hazy out there this morning behind that cold front.

It's not just us. Those Alberta fires are pushing smoke into much of the United States. Smoky skies have affected much of the northern Plains states  and southern Canadian prairies as well.

The smoky skies have been occasionally spreading to far-flung places like Vancouver, Minneapolis, Toronto, Detroit and Kansas City.  Smoke has also been spreading north to the Arctic Circle and into northeastern Alaska. There's a great smoke map that allows you to track the smoke by hitting this hyperlink. 

The fires up in Alberta are huge and out of control. At least 10,000 people in the remote region have been evacuated, and there's little sign that they fires will be under control any time soon.

Wildfires do seem to be on the increase and the season is lasting longer, due in large part to climate change. Unfortunately, we've had to get used to hazy, smokey skies in recent years as large fires repeated pump smoke into the atmosphere.

Springtime wildfires in the North are increasing because the snow melts earlier in the season, things dry out faster so fires can start. There have also been substantial wildfires in Siberia this spring.

While the smoke is rarely dense enough in Vermont to cause health problems, any level of particulate pollution in the atmosphere isn't good for us.

Mostly, it's just a let down when you want a brilliant blue sky and you get a sickly haze. It's not that we won't have bluebird days this summer or in future summers. It's just that we'll have to get used to experiencing fewer of them.

On the bright side, I suppose, the wildfire smoke can create more colorful and interesting sunrises and sunsets. You always have to find the positive somewhere, right?

Hurricane Lane Updates And More Smoke Attacks

Hurricane Lane continued to batter Hawaii overnight and this morning, and it's going to be a long day on the island chain.

This chart supplied by NOAA shows air pressure falling
dramatically, and winds increasing, then suddenly stopping,
then picking up again as the eye of Hurricane Lane
passed over a weather monitoring buoy south of Hawaii

Meanwhile, smoke from wildfires continues to make life unpleasant or worse in many parts of the world.

HURRICANE LANE

At last check, Hurricane Lane was a Category 3 storm with winds of up to 120 mph. It was grinding slowly northward toward Maui and Oahu.  Wind shear is slowly weakening the storm and these strong upper level winds will influence the path of the storm and the degree of destruction in Hawaii.

If the wind shear weakens Hurricane Lane relatively quickly, its northward path will abruptly shift toward the west, sparing much of the state the worst of the hurricane's effects.

If Hurricane Lane weakens a little more slowly than expected, the center of the storm will come close to or even possibly over the islands before turning west, which of course would make things much much worse.

The betting now is that the westward turn will come before Hurricane Lane reaches the islands. Still, it's already close enough to cause a lot of problems and that will just get worse today.

Already, more than 18 inches of rain has fallen on the Big Island of Hawaii, and there's been lots of flash flooding. One town has picked up 26 inches of rain so far. (For comparison's sake, here in Vermont, Burlington has had 22 inches of precipitation so far this year. So we've had less rain in eight months than that town in Hawaii had in a couple of days. )

The flooding will get worse as the hurricane slowly makes its way past Hawaii. Some places could get up to 40 inches of rain.

Wind and battering surf will be bring problems with Hurricane Lane, but the worst of it will be the flooding. Seems like that's a trend.

Oddly, in one are of Maui, it hasn't rained much yet and the wind is picking up. That's spreading a brush fire of all things that has forced the evacuation of a storm emergency shelter.

Speaking of wildfires...….

LOTS OF SMOKE, STILL

A recent hazy sunset in St. Albans this morning, created
by smoke from western wildfires overhead. The haze
has gained and ebbed, and was fairly thick this
morning, at least aloft.

When I got up this morning in St. Albans, Vermont the sky, which should have been blue, was covered with a milky haze.

That's wildfire smoke blowing overhead. It is hazy at ground level, too, but it's not that bad. Most of the polllution here is high overhead, so as of this morning, the air isn't terribly unhealthy. 

Not so in many other places as wildfires continue to burn in large swaths of forest in the Northern Hemisphere during this long, hot summer.

We talked the other day about how awful it was in Seattle, but a wind shift off the ocean is greatly improving air quality there.

Inland, though, it's a different story. Air quality alerts remain in place for a large area of the northern Rocky Mountains.

In Germany, smoke choked Berlin because of a nearby forest fire. Worse, the area where the fire was burning has unexploded bombs left over from World War II, Reuters reports.  How's that for a fire fighting hazard?

According to Climate Central, the increase in the number of wildfire smoke days threatens to undo the progress made under the 1970 Clean Air Act. Emissions from factories and cars are cleaner than they used to be, but the rising trend in wildfires and wildfire smoke is working against that progress.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration is seeking to relax Clean Air Act rules.

Sigh.

Madison Flood, Seattle Smoke and Hawaii Hurricane?

 .

EDITOR'S NOTE:
A photo of the Madison flood that originally appeared in this post was removed, as photo credit was not given and I could not prove it was Madison flood. I regret the error.

Spots of nasty weather keep popping up in different places in the nation. Areas around Madison, Wisconsin were inundated by up to a foot of rain, smoke is choking some areas of the west, including Seattle, Washington and Vancouver, British Columbia. And Hawaii is under threat from a hurricane.

MADISON FLOOD

Around a foot of rain fell in and around Madison, Wisconsin yesterday and last night, creating some of the worst flooding some areas around there have seen in decades. 

Many roads were closed, with city officials warning people not to drive through certain sections of Madison this morning. Many people had to be rescued from stranded cars, and water flowed into a number of homes and businesses. One person has been reported missing due to the floods.

Video of the flooding is at the bottom of this post.

This was all part of a slow moving storm that also caused serious flash flooding earlier in the day around Omaha, Nebraska and Council Bluffs, Iowa, among other places. Homes and apartment buildings in Council Bluffs flooded. 

The storm system also spun off a few tornadoes and caused quite a few damaging thunderstorms.

The storm will affect us here in Vermont tonight and tomorrow, but no severe thunderstorms or flooding will happen.

SMOKE ATTACK

Skyline of Seattle, Washington obscured by smoke Monday. Image form
KIRO, Seattle

Wildfires continue to rage from California to British Columbia with pretty much no relief in sight. The fires aren't only affecting people right near the fires.

Millions of people are coughing in heavy smoke settling into populated areas, including Seattle, Washington and Vancouver, British Columbia.

Air quality in British Columbia over the past few days has often been the worst in the world, even worse than the epic smog attacks that sometimes engulf Beijing, China. Ironically, Beijing reported its best, cleanest air quality in a decade this past week.

All this smoke is obviously unhealthy. KIRO-TV reported the smoke in Seattle Monday was as unhealthy as smoking seven cigarettes. Authorities were warning people not to go outdoors if at all possible, and also not to bring pets outside either. Which would be difficult, I think.

In British Columbia, the smoke was so thick that flights around Vancouver were delayed, and activities at some soccer camps were postponed.

The smoke keeps making its way eastward. There have been occasional air quality alerts in places like Minnesota. Here in Vermont, we have seen periods of hazy skies occasionally over the past week due to the western smoke.

HAWAII HURRICANE?

Powerful Hurricane Lane was spinning southeast of Hawaii this morning with top sustained winds of 140 mph. Current projections indicated it could come close to, or even over some of the Hawaiian islands later this week.

Hurricane Lane could strike Hawaii later this week

It's still a bit uncertain if that will happen, but people are being told to start preparing, just in case.

Even if Hurricane Lane hits Hawaii, it will weaken a bit by the time it gets there. It would still be a powerful, dangerous storm, so  it's probably a good idea if residents start at least thinking about it.

Destructive hurricanes are rare in Hawaii but they do happen. In 1992, Hurricane Iniki hit Kauai, killing six people, injuring 1,000, destroying 1,500 homes and damaging countless other. Total estimated damages were at $1.8 billion dollars.

Here's a video of the flash flooding breaking a small retaining wall and surging into an understandably frightened woman's house:

Much Of Nation Choking On Smoky Air From Western Wildfires

This map shows smoke conditions across the nation this past Wednesday
Notice even here in Vermont we had some smoky haze.

Yesterday was one of those classic, bright, blue, beautiful summer days here in Vermont.

Visibility was excellent. Green mountains in the distance seemed so clear and distinct you felt like you could reach out and touch them.

The sky was a brilliant deep blue, small clouds gleamed white in the sun, and just breathing felt so refreshing.

Not so in much of the rest of the nation. Especially in the western half, where all those wildfires have been belching incredible amounts of smoke into the atmosphere. Like it has done often in recent years, this smoke is traveling across the nation, across the Northern Hemisphere, really, joined by smoke from wildfires in places like Canada, Siberia, even Scandinavia.

Yes, it's not just the people close to the wildfires that are being affected, though obviously they have it worse than the rest of us. We don't have to evacuate our homes, worry about walls of flames racing down the forested hillsides in back of our houses.

But when the smoke arrives, it's not good for us. We're still in the clear in Vermont, for now, but we have seen some haze from the western wildfires already. Note that the map in this post shows some smoke over us on Wednesday. And of course, it was rather hazy that day. That cold front early Friday shoved the smoke south of New England, for now.

A smoky haze obscures the view of the Adirondacks from the
Burlington, Vermont waterfront last August. A wave of
wildfire smoke from the western U.S. was passing through at the time.

Particulate pollution -  which is really the smoke pollution - is pretty high today in broad areas of the West and Midwest.

Minnesota, many hundreds of miles away from the western wildfires, is under an Air Quality Alert today. Special weather statements are up in many areas, including the Dakotas, for a smokey haze that's reducing visibility.

This haze isn't good for anybody's health. Elderly, newborns and people with pre-existing conditions like COPD and emphysema are at risk. Wildfires are harming the health of people thousands of miles from where the actual flames are.

People are describing the extreme western wildfires as the "new normal" partly because climate change has made wildfires bigger, stronger and more erratic.

The new normal also means more hazy times for the rest of us. Even here in Vermont. The atmosphere out there is clean and clear as I write this early Saturday morning. But the haze will be back, sooner or later, any day now, and we'll have to get used to more days in which our Green Mountains fade behind a greyish, bluish haze.

Enjoy the clean air while you have it.

Geeky But Wicked Cool NASA Video Shows Sea Salt, Smoke And Hurricane Interaction

An image from NASA's visualization of aerosols in the
atmosphere during the hurricane season. The blue and
white swirls over the oceans are hurricanes and other
storms concentrating sea salt in the atmosphere. The ghostly
white stuff in western North America is smoke from wildfires.

I just came across a cool visualization video that shows how aerosols in the atmosphere such as sea salt, smoke from wild fires and dust from the Sahara Desert interact and move around the world.

I know, I know, it sounds just a bit dull and science-y, but definitely watch the video at the bottom of this post. It's mesmerizing. Even to people who aren't weather geeks.

Says NASA:

"This visualization uses data from NASA satellites, combined with mathematical models in a computer simulation (that) allows scientists to study physical processes in our atmosphere. By following the sea salt that is evaporated from the oceans, you can see the storms of the 2017 hurricane season."

That is perhaps the most striking feature of the video. You can see high concentrations of salt gathered up in strengthening and strong hurricanes like Harvey, Irma, Maria and Ophelia.

A unique feature of Ophelia that you can see in the video is how it sucked up sea salt, like all hurricanes do, but also Saharan dust and smoke from deadly wildfires in Portugal, and that helps explain the odd smoky skies over Britain as Ophelia and its post-tropical remnants blustered through.

Another fascinating part of the video is how you can see wildfires break out in western and northern Canada, and in the western United States, then watch the smoke blow across the continent and over to  Europe and Asia.

The erupting wildfires are seen as dense pinpoint plumes of smoke before the smoke and ash disperse over wide areas.

The video sure helps explain why the sky was so often hazy and smoky over Vermont in August and September. A lot of wildfire smoke blew our way.

Smoke from the increasing trend of wildfires is raising health concerns as all the additional smoke from longer and more intense fire seasons is affecting human health, especially in areas relatively close to the fires.

You'll probably want to watch the video repeatedly to catch all the activity going on with the hurricanes, salt and smoke.

Here's the video:

Irma Records, And Seemingly Endless Vermont Sunshine

Sister Margaret Ann in West Kendall, Florida
became an social media sensation when
she was spotted chainsawing like a pro
to clear trees felled by Irma that were
blocking a road. 

I have to say that while we've been watching Hurricane Irma, we here in Vermont have entered a stretch of truly gorgeous late summer/early autumn weather.

Sunny, warm days and clear, cool nights have settled in starting this past Sunday, and it's due to continue all week.

There are very few flaws to this weather if you like these types of conditions. There is still smoke in the air high above us, from all those fires in the western United States and Canada. That's giving the sky an off-color, not that bright robins egg blue we like to see.

Chances are the smoke will clear a bit, we'll see. That's partly due to a dramatic shift in the weather coming up for Montana, which has really had a big problem with wildfires this summer.

Today, in the western Montana mountains, the threat of wildfires and dense smoke continues amid unusully warm conditions.

By Thursday night, the temperatures in those same mountains will plummet by up to 50 degrees and it will start to snow. The first winter storm watch of the season is in effect for some of the Montana mountains, believe it or not.

Back here in Vermont, no snow, but there might be a few isolated to scattered showers and thunderstorms around Thursday and Friday afternoons to briefly interrupt our sunny stretch. That's because a little moisture from the dead remnants of Hurricane Irma sneak into our sunny world.

High pressure, however looks like it will continue to hang tough over us through the weekend, giving us continued warm afternoons and clear nights.

While I say nights will be clear, this time of year there is almost always patches of dense fog, especially in river valleys and near lakes and ponds.  So you'll have to watch out for that if your driving early any morning for the next week. Any fog each day will burn off quickly after the sun comes up.

Recapping Irma, she did set some records for an intense Atlantic hurricane.  Philip Klotzbach, a meteorologist at Colorado State University who specializes in hurricanes compiled a long list. Some highlights.

Irma was tied with the 1935 Florida Keys storm, Gilbert in 1988 and Wilma in 2005 as having the second strongest winds on record for any Atlantic hurricane, at 185 mph. (Hurricane Allen maxed out at 190 mph in 1980.)

The 185 mph Irma winds were the strongest of any Atlantic Ocean hurricane outside the Caribbean or Gulf of Mexico.

Those 185 Irma winds lasted 37 hours, the longest period of time  such strong winds persisted for any tropical cyclone anywhere in the world.

Irma was a Category 5 storm for a little over three days, tying the record for the longest life of a Category 5 hurricane in the Atlantic. The tie was with a hurricane that hit Cuba in 1932.

Another interesting coincidence: The last major hurricane to hit Florida was Wilma in 2005, which made landfall on Marco Island. This year, Irma made landfall in Florida, you guessed it -- on Marco Island.

By the way, the other hurricane spinning out in the Atlantic - Jose - is looking more and more likely to completely miss the United States, which is great news.

Southeast U.S. Literally Stinks. Not A Slam On Them, Just The Forest Fires

Smoke from wildfires fills the sky over northern
Georgia last week, in this view from a satellite. 

The intensifying drought in the Southeast slogs on, and now the forests are burning, causing air pollution levels to soar in many cities in the region.

Atlanta has been smelling like smoke off and on for days.

One of my customers I had on the phone yesterday from western North Carolina says she's been choking on the smoke for weeks now. She can't even go outside and work in her garden.

There are no fewer than 30 wildfires burning in the Southeast late last week, says the Weather Channel.

There have been some mandatory evacuations in parts of western North Carolina because of the fires, and seven firefighters were trapped by a wildfire in Tennessee. They were later rescued, uninjured, thank goodness.

Evacuations have been reported in northern Georgia, too.

Last week, Atlanta, Georgia was choked in smoke, as winds from the north and northeast brought smoke from the wildfires into the city. People said that it was hard to walk outdoors in the smoggy air.

Unfortunately, many of the wildfires were started by arsonists. In Kentucky, 150 of 210 fires were set by arsonists, the Weather Channel says.

The season is complicating fire fighting efforts. Falling autumn leaves are dropping down on containment lines, creating combustable "bridges" in which the fires can cross those containment lines. That makes it so much harder to put out the fires.

The wildfires have broken out amid a deep and worsening drought in the Southeast. Birmingham, Alabama, for example, is closing in on 60 consecutive days without measureable rainfall, the longest such period on record.

The weather forecast for the region is bleak. Little or no rain is expected in the Southeast for at least a week or more.

Fort McMurray Smoke Drifts Over Vermont

Satellite photo from the National Weather Service
office in Burlington, Vermont shows smoke
over the region from Alberta  

People in Vermont and much of the rest of the Northeast might have noticed the sky took on a hazy look last evening, and the blue sky still has a greyish hue to it this morning.

That's smoke from Alberta, mostly from the fire that devastated Fort McMurray last week. The fire is still burning big time and spewing smoke far and wide.

Depending on which way the wind has been blowing, the smoke has gotten as far from Alberta as the U.S. Gulf Coast.

Winds have shifted, and now the smoke is blowing over us.

Air quality isn't wonderful, but it's not bad enough to trigger air pollution alerts.

But the hazy Vermont sky is a reminder that the North American wildfire season is off to a bad start.

And we'll probably have hazy days like this several more times this summer.

Canada's Fire Weather Spread Into Minnesota, Other U.S. Areas, Too.

Cover photo from Canada's National Post illustrates
the utter destruction of Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada.  

The cataclysmic Fort McMurray wildfire rages on, and the weather that caused that fire spread into the Upper Midwest.

Fires broke out there, too.

While certainly tiny in comparison to Fort McMurray, wildfires in northern Minnesota prompted evacuations and threatened numerous homes.

An assisted living facility was evacuated as a precaution in Minnesota, the Duluth News Tribune reported. 

It's not in immediate danger, but they wisely wanted to get residents out of the way in case the wind changes direction and drives the fire toward the facility.

Television station KARE reported one fire in northern Minnesota had consumed 450 acres as of Friday and was only 10 percent contained.

The temperature reached 92 degrees in Duluth, Minnesota Friday, the earliest 90 degree reading on record there. That reading also broke the previous record high for the date by a full 10 degrees.

Minneapolis also had a record high for the date Friday at 92 degrees. Saturday morning Minneapolis was among the places stuck in a murky cloud of grey smoke.

Air pollution is a big problem in places like Wisconsin and Minnesota now, too. Smoke from Fort McMurray, combined with smoke from local wildfires, has made fine particulates in the air skyrocket.

Scattered thunderstorms arrived later Friday in northern Minnesota, cooling the temperatures and providing a little wetting.

But the rain wasn't enough to contain fires, or eliminate the fire danger across northern Minnesota. Red flag warnings are up for today because windy dry weather could encourage more wildfires.

Indonesian Peat Forest Fires Big Disaster, Plus Worsening Global Warming

Viewed from space: Peat fires emit smoke on
the Indonesian island of Sumatra in September.
Image from NASA Earth Observatory. 

Bad land management practices in Indonesia, El Nino and global warming are teaming up to cause a nasty disaster in and around Indonesia, and this particular mess will actually worsen global warming a bit.

Farmers and land owners and others set fires in peat forests to clear land. Most of the land clearing is illegal, by the way.

Largely because of El Nino, that periodic warming of the eastern Pacific Ocean that's underway now, there's a drought in Indonesia.

The fires have developed into these hard to put out underground fires in peat that area really, REALLY smoky. Peat is soil consisting mostly of partly decayed plant material often found in wetlands.

Of course these Indonesian wetlands dried out in the drought, and are now ablaze.

The smoky fires blanketed the region in a thick, thick haze, causing respiratory harm in a wide area, including Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam and Singapore, as well as Indonesia.

The smoke and haze could kill, or at the very least contribute to the deaths of at least 10,000 people, making the Indonesian peat fires the deadliest disaster of 2015, notes Dr. Jeff Masters in his Weather Underground blog.

Masters also said an estimated 120,000 people have already sought medical attention because of respiratory illnesses related to the Indonesian peat fires.

The fires are also described as "carbon bombs" because they're emitting huge amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The peat normally stores the carbon dioxide, but when it burns, it goes into the atmosphere.

Since carbon dioxide is the main gas contributing to global warming,  this is a bad thing. By some estimates, the current Indonesian peat fires are emitting as much carbon dioxide as the entire nation of Germany does in a year.

The Washington Post notes that the peat fires contribute perhaps 20 percent of the annual carbon emissions in the world.

Regular forest fires emit a lot of carbon dioxide, too. But when the trees grow back, some of that released carbon dioxide is sequestered back into the returning trees and is thus removed from the atmosphere where it can do harm.

Not so with the peat fires. The peat has been slowly accumulating for thousands of years, and once it's gone in a fire, it's gone. The released carbon dioxide just sits in the atmosphere, worsening global warming.

Here's a compilation video from Greenpeace showing the extent of the fires and the haze from these peat fires in Indonesia. It's pretty scary.

Smoke, Haze From Canada Fires Obscuring U.S. Summer

Smoke and haze from Canadian wildfires makes
for an eerie sunset over Lake Champlain
in St. Albans, Vermont Wednesday. 

Wednesday around my home in St. Albans, Vermont should have been one of those absolutely classic Green Mountain summer days.

A cold front had swept down from Canada early in the morning, whisking away stifling humidity that had settled over the state the day before, and that night.

Usually these cold fronts yield what I call "Blue/Green days, something the Vermont Department of Travel and Tourism regularly prays for.

In the fresh, dry Canadian airmass, Blue/Green days feature a brilliant, haze-free blue sky. The lush green of the hills, mountains and hayfields gleams royally in the sun.

The air is refreshing, the view for hikers from the mountaintops lasts forever, and you can almost hear the Trapp family singing "The Hills Are Alive....."

Not Wednesday. The cold front certainly cleared out the humidity. The sun came out, sort of. But the sky was a faint slate blue. The few clouds in the sky looked pinkish brown, not billowy white like usual. If you could see the mountains at all through the haze, they were just grayish blue, faint outlines.

What the hell happened to our glorious summer?

Wildfires.

Specifically, it's been hot and dry in the western half of Canada, much of Alaska and parts of the western United States. What is normally those clean, bright airmasses that occasionally drift down from Canada picked up a lot of this smoke and blew it across the border into New England.

Actually, much of the country is getting these smoke attacks. A big ridge of high pressure is contributing to the western heat and encouraging those fires. Downstream from the ridge, the airflow heads southeast into the United States, bringing the smoke from the fires with it.

A wildfire in Saskatchewan, Canada this month
Photo by Scott Knudsen, Northscope Photography via CBC.  n

Yes, it is a First World Problem on my end, complaining about hazy skies when I want a blue sky.

But the smoke and haze is just not a disappointment. It is pollution after all. Fine particles in the haze and smoke can cause lung trouble.

As the Washington Post noted, the 350 fires burning in Canada, some of them quite large, are sending enough smoke into the United States to occasionally prompt air pollution alerts.

People with pre-existing lung conditions in particular can really be hurt by all this smoke.

It looks like the entire rest of the summer will be smoky, at least occasionally. The number of fires, already huge, are expected to grow.

Enormous fires are burning in Saskatchewan, Canada. They're so huge that 1 percent of Saskatchewan's population has been forced to flee the fires. That's 13,000 people kicked out of their homes because of the fires.

Some experts think the Saskatchewan fires won't be completely extinguished until the snow flies, says the CBC  

This is anecdotal, but it seems to me we are seeing increasingly smoky summers due to Canadian, Alaskan and western fires in recent years.

The increase in these fires is consisten with what climate experts say is resulting from global warming. If that's the case, smoke and haze might end up becoming a permanent part of our once pristine New England summers.

As Expected, Fire Season Out West Is Just Terrible And Getting Worse

Wildfire sweeping through Wenatchee, Washington
amid unprecedented June heat last weekend.  

Hot times have come this summer to parts of the United States, and other parts of the Northern Hemisphere with incredible heat waves breaking all time records.

The trend is continuing into July.

It seems where I live in Vermont was the exception: June was a little cool and a LOT wet, with near record amounts of precipitation and no days making it to 90 degrees. But it's a totally different story elsewhere.

Out West, it was hot, hot, hot.

According to the National Climatic Data Center, in June, 1,484 daily record highs were set at United States weather station, while only 106 daily record lows were set.

74 weather stations had all time record highs for the entire month of June, and two set all time high temperature records.

The heat has truly been extreme in Washington State and nearby areas. According to Weather Underground, the high temperature of 113 degrees in Walla Walla, Washington, if verified, will not only be the hottest June temperature on record in that city, but for the entire state.

In Walla Walla, the new June record broke the old record of 109 degrees for the month, set just the day before.

List of cities that had record
warm Junes. Click on image
 to make it bigger, easier to see.  

Lewiston, Idaho reached 111 degrees, which is a June record for that city, and possibly for the entire state of Idaho.

All time June high temperature records were set in Yakima and Spokane, Washington; Kalispell, Missoula and Helena, Montana and Meacham Oregon.

At least 19 cities in the northwestern United States, and in Alaska, had their warmest Junes on record. Some cities broke the record by very wide margins.

As you'd expect, with the extreme heat and the ongoing drought, wildfires broke out. As you might have seen on the news, one such wildfire slammed into the city of Wenatchee, Washington, burning at least two dozen homes, along with some businesses.

As you'll notice in an amazing video at the bottom of this post, embers from the main wildfire traveled long distances to set buildings in Wenatchee ablaze.

The drought and heat extended into western Canada and Alaska. Revelstoke, a ski resort town in British Columbia, reached 103 degrees on Sunday.

June wildfire near Willow, Alaska.
Photo by Mat-Su Borough.   

Because of early season heat, Alaska is off to its worst fire season in history.

Alaska is closing in on 2 million acres charred by fires already and it's early in the fire season. This year is on pace to easily surpass 2004 as Alaska's worst fire year on record, when more than 6 million acres burned, says the Washington Post

The fires in Alaska are particularly dangerous. Permafrost is underneath much of Alaska's forests and scrub land that's on fire. If thre's a fire, there's dark ash left.

The black ash collects the heat of the sun, helping to melt the permafrost underneath. When permafrost melts, it releases carbon dioxide into the air.

The released carbon dioxide just adds more to the processes that accelerate global warming.

All this smoke from the wildfires is spreading far and wide. Part of northeastern Montana was under a  dense smoke advisory Monday due to Canadian wildfires. Smoke has spread through much of the middle of the country.

People in areas where the smoke gets really thick face health hazards. Fine particulates in the smoke can cause lung damage.

Expect bouts of smoky haze anywhere in the United States over the next few weeks because of these fires. The smoke would be ironic in many parts of the South and Northeast, parts of which had a record wet June.

Elsewhere, Europe is settling into a nasty heat wave to open the month of July. Already, Madrid, Spain set a new high temperature record for the month of June with a reading of 104 degrees for two days in a row.

Today's high temperature of 36.7 Celcius or 98 degrees Fahrenheit is the hottest July temperature on record in the United Kingdom

Forecasters say temperatures this week could reach to 110 degrees in southern Spain near Cordoba, says the Washington Post Capital Weather Gang blog.

The blog also reports that temperatures could reach 100 degrees in Paris by Wednesday.

The impending heat wave in Europe brings fears of another disaster like in the summer of 2003, in which weeks of record heat killed or contributed to the deaths of up to 35,000 people.

The building European heat is caused by an "omega block"in which areas of low pressure create a high pressure area between them and push hot air far north into Europe.

The omega block can sustain itself for long periods. The high temperatures strengthen the ridge, the ridge creates more heat and you're stuck with a long, dangerous hot spell that in the worst scenarios can last weeks, as Capital Weather Gang notes.

Pakistan also suffered a terrible heat wave during June, in which at least 1,200 were killed by heat related ailments, like heat stroke.

If you're wondering if all these heat waves are related to global warming, they could well be. It's hard to pin a specific weather event on global warming and lots of factors cause heat waves, but as the world warms, we've long been told we can expect more frequent and more intense heat waves.

The hot spells in the Northern Hemisphere this summer are completely consistent with what the climate scientists have been telling us would happen.

It looks  like it's going to be a long, hot, fiery summer.

Here's life in Wenatchee, Washington last weekend.

Incredible Time Lapse Shows Forest Fire Smoke Choking Lake Tahoe

The King Fire in California last week.
Photo by Noah Berger, Reuters.  

You've probably heard on the news about the so-called King Fire, a massive forest fire east of Sacramento California.

It has burned more than 87,500 acres, an area bigger in size than sprawling Atlanta, Georgia or Las Vegas, Nevada. It's still spreading amid shifting winds, drought and wicked hot temperatures.

Until recently, the King Fire pretty much avoided most homes, but now it's spreading into populated areas and has burned at least 22 structures and threatens more than 20,000 others.

A man named Wayne Allen Huntsman was charged with arson in connection with the fire and his bail was set at $10 million, local authorities said.

On Saturday, the wind abruptly shifted, bringing the smoke very fast over the Sierra Nevada mountains and into Lake Tahoe.

The onslaught of smoke forced the cancellation of the Ironman Lake Tahoe on Sunday, due to very sensible worries that vigorous exercise in dense smoke could be dangerous.

No doubt, the athletes were terribly disappointed. Says the Washington Post, quoting athlete Tom Kazukynas:

When the organizers of the Ironman announced that was canceled, athletes were crushed. 'Racers fell into the sand crying, total disbelief on some faces and shock on others,' said Kazukynas in an email. 'This Ironman is a once in a lifetime chance for many of the racers and to see the look of the athletes who just had taken away by an act of arson was absolutely heartbreaking."

A dense smoke advisory is still in effect around Lake Tahoe and Reno, Nevada due to the King Fire.

Here's that time lapse video showing the King Fire smoke invading the Lake Tahoe basin on Saturday. Pretty wild:

Haze Clears In Vermont, Northeast, For Now; Could Be Back

That spell of very warm, humid weather that ended with Thursday's showers and thunderstorms also brought a lot of haze to the Northeast.

Haze over Lake Champlain
in this view from South
Burlington, Vermont.  

As I start my day now, on Friday in St. Albans, Vermont, the sky is very clear. There's no haze,  and it's bright blue and beautiful.

Clean air from Canada is the reason for the improved atmosphere. Northwest winds are drawing the air into our neck of the woods.

The haze might come back though. As we start heading into Sunday and especially next week, the air flow over us will come more from the west.

As you know, huge wildfires continue to plague the west, especially in California.  Smoke from the fires could make it this far, in the form of haze, just as it did earlier this week.

Any haze we do get won't be just smoke from the fires.  As is often the case during warm spells in the summer, it gets hazy with or without fires out west. We also get pollutants from Midwest industries.

The particles from the pollution, be it industry in Cleveland or forest fires in the Sierra Nevada, cling to water droplets, and we get hazy.

It's hard to say how hazy it will get, or even if the landscape will get particularly blurry. We'll just see how it plays out. Meanwhile, enjoy the wonderful clear air today and Saturday.

New England Haze Partly Due To Western Fires

People living in Vermont and many other places in the Northeast might have noticed Monday the sun seemed a bit dimmed by haze, even though visibility near the surface was good, with the mountains not that badly blocked out by the stuff in the air.

A wildfire burns in Idaho this week.
Photo by Ashley Smith via AP

And the sunset was really, really red last evening. It's hazy again this Tuesday morning.

Part of the reason is because the western United States is basically on fire. Wildfires have become pretty widespread over the western third of the nation.

Much of the airflow with the current weather pattern is from the west, so some of that smoke is blowing overhead.

It's not really enough to be a health problem for us, but the haze could continue to create interesting sunrises and sunsets for a couple more days.

A cold front due Thursday night will shift the winds to a northerly direction, which will bring in some clearer air from Canada this weekend.