Have you noticed the hazy skies over central PA? Here’s why and how long it will last
The hazy skies central Pennsylvanians are noticing, and will likely continue to notice throughout the week, are caused by several large wildfires in the western United States and Canada.
Mike Dangelo, meteorologist at the National Weather Service in State College, said the smoke particles travel with the wind.
“The wildfires that are out in the western U.S. and western Canada, central Canada, have thrown a lot of smoke up into the atmosphere. And what that’s doing is, it streams down with the general wind flow. And that’s coming from the west to the east, and there’s a little bit of a dip here to the south, out of Canada, into the Great Lakes and over Pennsylvania. That’s bringing all the smoke particles overhead,” Dangelo said.
Many smoke particles will stay aloft and heavier particles will fall close to the fire, Dangelo said, but if they’re small, they can get lost at tens of thousands of feet in the air. The particles can travel thousands of miles from where the fires are. He estimates it takes about two days to get here.
He expects the haze to continue for about a week or so because the wind flow that is happening across the continent is going to be “rather persistent” coming from Canada and down into the mid-Atlantic. Not all days will be as hazy as Tuesday, though.
The smoke is cutting down on the heat a little, Dangelo said.
“Otherwise, you know, it’d be a fairly sunny day today (Tuesday). We’ll probably have our temperatures cut down by two or three degrees from what they could be,” he said.
Air quality alerts were issued for parts of Pennsylvania and New York on Tuesday, so people who already have respiratory problems could be uncomfortable, Dangelo said. Other factors beyond the smoke could be impacting the air quality, as well.
Hazy days often end with a nice sunset, though. 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.
“If you think about the colors of the rainbow ... the red and orange stuff isn’t filtered out, so it continues to come to us from the sun,” he said.
