A large swath of the Eastern United States looked “like California at the peak of fire season” Tuesday, as a series of wildfires in Quebec sent plumes of smoke into the atmosphere. According to a new map circulating online, several major cities are now facing extraordinary air quality issues.
Exacerbated by climate change and record seasonal heat, Canada is currently experiencing one of the worst starts to its yearly wildfire season on record. More than 6.7 million acres have already been burned across the country, particularly in provinces like Quebec and Nova Scotia. In Quebec, roughly 150 are still active, forcing the evacuation of around 14,000 residents and sending massive amounts of smoke south into the U.S.
On Tuesday, Capital Weather Gang, a weather observation Twitter account operated by the Washington Post, shared an infographic map with air quality levels across a large chunk of the Eastern U.S., with levels getting worse the nearer a place was to the epicenter of the fires, and with unusually poor levels being reported in several states, including New York, Michigan, Minnesota, and most of New England.
The smoke — making the Eastern U.S. look like California at the peak of fire season — is not normal.The air is compromised from Minneapolis to DC to Boston, and the worst from western NY to arround Ottawa. A thread… 1/ pic.twitter.com/cV8MnfdWRI
— Capital Weather Gang (@capitalweather) June 6, 2023
“The smoke — making the Eastern U.S. look like California at the peak of fire season — is not normal,” the account stated. “The air is compromised from Minneapolis to DC to Boston, and the worst from western NY to [around] Ottawa.”
In a follow-up tweet, the account shared a look at the 12 worst cities in the world for air quality as of Tuesday afternoon. On account of the smoke, Toronto ranked fifth, behind cities like Delhi, India, and Jakarta, Indonesia, but still worse than Hanoi, Vietnam. New York City, not known for strong air quality in normal conditions, ranked seventh, worse than Shanghai, China. Detroit rounded out the ranking in twelfth.
Outside Canada, the worst effects of the smoke were felt in Western and Central New York, home to cities like Buffalo, Rochester, Binghamton, and Syracuse. Looking further, alarming air quality levels can be found in a wide-ranging number of cities, including Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C.
Newsweek reached out to Accuweather via email for comment.
Portions of the mid-Atlantic region, from Michigan to New Jersey, on Tuesday, were also found to have the ideal dry conditions for their own wildfires, raising the possibility of new wildfires in the U.S. that could worsen the situation from within.
“Strangely, the smoke situation in the East triggered by the fires in Canada could be worsened by new fires that may erupt between Michigan and New Jersey,” Capital Weather Gang added in a later tweet. “Dry thunderstorms — unheard of in the eastern U.S — could even erupt.”
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