Hazy skies are in Centre County’s forecast due to wildfires in the western United States
Hazy skies will likely appear over central Pennsylvania Thursday and into Friday due to wildfires happening on the other side of the country.
The haze is caused by smoke traveling from large wildfires in the western United States. Mike Doll, senior meteorologist at AccuWeather, said the greatest concentration of smoke over the area will be later Thursday, into the night and Friday.
“The sky will definitely appear hazy or even kind of milky,” Doll said.
Hazy days often begin and end with enhanced sunrises and sunsets, as long as fog doesn’t get in the way. The smoke particles filter out some of the shorter wavelengths of light — violet and indigo — more so than longer wavelengths, accentuating the reds and oranges.
“It has a really vivid orange or even even reddish orange color to it,” Doll said. “It’s basically the light being refracted through those really, really tiny particles.”
When there are large wildfires that have burned tens of thousands of acres, there’s obviously a lot of smoke emanating from the fires, Doll said.
Jet streams — narrow bands of strong wind in the upper levels of the atmosphere — are the main transport of the smoke, Doll said. The smoke can rise thousands of feet into the air. When that happens, it can reach the jet stream level.
“They get carried by the jet stream winds. So, in this case, how that higher level smoke got here was … smoke basically moved through the Northern Rockies, Southwest Canada, moved through the northern U.S., across the Great Lakes and then into the northeastern part of the United States,” he said.
Some of the computer models that model the smoke are showing a decrease in the concentration by the end of the day Friday, Doll said. But most of Friday will “definitely have a noticeable haze to the sky,” he said.
The air quality in central Pennsylvania won’t be impacted, Doll said.
“Because the smoke is, you know, tens of thousands of feet above the surface and it’s dispersed, it doesn’t cause any breathing problems. Since the origination of the smoke is from fires out in the western United States, … it’s all well above the Earth’s surface. It’s not the type of near surface smoke that could cause breathing problems, especially for those that have pre-existing respiratory issues,” he said.
AccuWeather’s State College forecast for Friday says there will be “patchy morning fog,” and hazy sun.
