Canada breaks new record as the worst wildfire season: smoke had reached Europe
Canada has officially marked its worst wildfire season on record with the wildfire activity beginning at the start of May. The concerns are raising, regarding the burning area and the quality of air. The smoke from the wildfires had reached many states of Northern America, bringing poor air quality, specially the eastern states and it reached Europe.
The wildfires in Canada had already burned at least 19,027,114 acres across the country. Canada has nearly 500 wildfires active, while more than half of them are out of control.
Wildfire smoke from Canada will overspread western Europe in the coming days - from Portugal & Spain to France, Ireland & southern England...
— Ben Noll (@BenNollWeather) June 26, 2023
Most of this will be lofted high in the atmosphere, causing some unique sun rises & sun sets but not affecting air quality. pic.twitter.com/0gOyq2g5Rw
Smoke from wildfires in Canada continues to drift east across Europe, reaching as far as southern Italy more than 6,500 km away from the fires in Quebec. Thats insane. pic.twitter.com/zLId1XrdL4
— Nahel Belgherze (@WxNB_) June 28, 2023
Smoke from Canada travels across Europe reaching Italy. The smoke, as was discussed in a previous article, brought significant poor quality to the NY city the first days of June. NY city and the East Coast was under an orange fog between Tuesday 6/06 and Thursday 8/06 with people wearing masks to protect themselves from the high concentrations of the M2.5 particles which can cause help problems. As the wildfires are still active and there is a strong westerly wind in the upper atmosphere the smoke continues to follow an eastern course towards Europe. The band of smoke reached the Azores islands on Sunday and western Europe on Monday and Tuesday while from yesterday big amounts of smoke have been noticed in southern, central and northern Europe. The last few days have been traveling through the Mediterranean Sea, which is also noticeable to Italy. Yesterday, a band of smoke was seen in Sardegna and southern Italy.
Fortunately, there is no danger of the smoke in Europe as it appears at high levels over 1.100m. It's nothing like the low-lying smoke that brought poor quality levels in the U.S. In Quebec, though, in Canada, the air quality is really poor all this month and as of Tuesday more than 140 communities are under air quality alerts.