Here in central NY we're in quite the bad way for the smoke and haze as a result of the Canadian forest fires in Quebec province. This has been going on for s few days by now. We have had so much smoke today that the visibility iss down to maybe a mile at ground level. And it smells like a campfire, even in the house with all the windows closed. The sun is dull orange, though it is "clear" out.

The gray color of the smoke can be seen on the NOAA GOES16 satellite images from a few minutes ago of the mid-Atlantic region. It's been "clear" (so says my Boltwood) for days but now there are clouds moving in on top of the smoke. Hopefully some rain will wash some of the smoke out of the air:

smoke.png

The air quality is past "purple" here, where it's normally not even "yellow." https://www.airnow.gov/ [for my zipcode 13045]:

AQI.png

The smoke is mostly supposed to clear up during Friday. Hope so. It would be nice to open the observatory again.

We are not devastated by fires here in New York, just bothered by the smoke. But this is certainly brings to mind how terrible the forest fires in the West must be and how so many people have suffered because of them.