Wildfire smoke from Canada could dull our blue sky in N.J. this summer

If you enjoy seeing a deep blue sky on a warm summer day, you may be disappointed in what weather forecasters are predicting.

Wildfires that are burning out of control in Canada this week are sending plumes of thick smoke into the atmosphere over many areas of the Northeast, including New Jersey. That’s causing the sky to look hazy or a dull grayish-blue on clear days.

And this trend is expected to continue through much of the summer, according to forecasters from AccuWeather and other weather agencies.

“Long-lasting stretches of deep blue sky may not return to the Midwest and the Northeast for weeks or possibly even months, once fires burning in Canada are contained and extinguished,” AccuWeather said on Wednesday.

If there is some good news, it’s that the dull colors in the sky won’t be apparent every day, forecasters said. In addition, on most days, the smoke won’t sink down to the ground level — the way it did during the summer of 2023.

That turned out to be a record-breaking year for the number of wildfires that broke out in Canada, so it wasn’t the norm.

However, warm temperatures and dry weather conditions will likely keep the threat of wildfires high in western and central Canada this summer, according to Mark Paquette, a former AccuWeather meteorologist who now works for AEM / Earth Networks, a weather and environmental monitoring company.

In addition, Paquette said there’s “a significant wildfire threat” in the western United States forecasted for July and August.

More bad news: A westerly flow pattern is expected this summer, pushing air from west to east, said Kyle Leahy, a meteorologist for WeatherWorks in New Jersey, a subsidiary of AEM.

As a result, smoke from the western U.S. and Canada is expected to drift across the central and eastern U.S. region, Leahy said.

Air quality alerts in N.J.

Although 16 counties in New Jersey are under an air quality alert on Thursday, it’s not directly related to the Canadian wildfire smoke.

“It’s more for ozone (pollution) and the (hot) temperatures, the sunny day and light wind,” said Nick Guzzo, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service forecast office in New Jersey.

“There is the wildfire smoke that is around as well, that’s giving a more hazy look to the sky,” Guzzo said.

But the smoke is remaining high in the sky and not sinking down to the ground.

“It’s well above the lower layers of the atmosphere or close to where we are,” Guzzo noted.

If the smoke becomes highly concentrated later this summer and winds are blowing the smoke over our region of the country, then it’s possible we could face a repeat of what we saw in June 2023, when heavy smoke sunk to the ground.

That caused visibility issues and more widespread breathing issues that triggered higher-level air quality alerts in New Jersey and New York.

Current weather radar

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Len Melisurgo may be reached at LMelisurgo@njadvancemedia.com or on X at @LensReality.