Western wildfires spreading smoke to Canada and New York

An enormous wildfire is burning across several Western states, but winds are carrying its smoke much further. The National Weather Service shared satellite images Tuesday showing smoke drifting southeast across New York and the Tri-State area. 

The service said the smoke would filter the sunshine throughout the day – and some New Yorkers woke up to hazy skies and a bright orange sun. 

This phenomenon has happened before, when smoke from wildfires in the West spread all the way to Washington, D.C. in September 2020, causing the sky to look hazy and orange.

In 2020, wildfires in Australia caused “unprecedented” conditions, NASA said. The space agency released satellite images that show smoke from the fires moving around the globe. The smoke was expected to make at least one full circuit around the world, said Colin Seftor and Rob Gutro of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. 

On Tuesday, the New York Department of Environmental Conservation issued a rare air quality alert for the state, reports James Gilbert, a meteorologist for WROC, CBS News’ Rochester affiliate. 

Ozone levels at the surface are increasing due to wildfire smoke and those with heart or lung disease as well as older adults and some children should limit outdoor activities, Gilbert reports.

Earlier this week, smoke from the Bootleg Fire, considered one of the largest in modern Oregon history, also stretched hundreds of miles northeast to the Canadian border, Agence France-Presse news service noted. 

Several people in Toronto posted photos of the hazy skies over the city on Twitter.

On Monday, the Bootleg Fire was burning more than 476 square miles, an area about the size of Los Angeles and three times the size of Detroit. 

Wildfires continue in 13 states, where 83 large fires have burned 1,293,636 acres, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.

Isolated dry thunderstorms were expected across eastern Oregon and Washington, Idaho, western Montana and northwest Wyoming on Tuesday, the agency said. Some of the storms will be capable of strong wind gusts and brief heavy rain – and lightning from these storms could make wildfires worse.

Meteorologists predicted critically dangerous fire weather through at least Monday, with lightning possible in both California and southern Oregon.

“Any thunderstorm has the potential to ignite new fire starts,” the National Weather Service in Sacramento, California, said on Twitter.