#Father son forest fire montana series#

Alerts were also in effect in parts of Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Georgia and the Carolinas, according to AirNow, a site that tracks air quality nationally and is operated by the U.S. The alerts stretched across to the east coast as hazy skies settled over places like Boston.Īn air quality health advisory was in effect for most of New York State, according to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, which said affected regions included the Upper Hudson Valley, Adirondacks, Eastern Lake Ontario and Central Regions.

#Father son forest fire montana series#

states this week came with a series of air quality alerts that impacted millions of people over the weekend and into Tuesday, some living as far west as Minnesota, Montana and Nebraska. The red sun and moon over northeastern U.S. 'When smoke is in the atmosphere, it not only makes the sun dimmer, it increases the amount and size of particulate matter in the atmosphere that absorbs more of the shorter wavelengths, leaving longer wavelengths to reach our eyes,' he explained.

'The sky is blue, for example, because small particles in the atmosphere scatter short wavelengths of the visible light spectrum more strongly than long wavelengths,' Sitkowski said, noting that blue-colored light has shorter wavelengths while red-colored light has longer ones.

Because the color of the sky is determined based on how sunlight interacts with the number and size of particles in the air, it changes with the infiltration of smoke, which introduces more particulate matter into the atmosphere. The smoke has caused the sun and the moon to appear red behind grey, hazy skies, said Sitkowski. The fires spread as weeks passed, and Canadian officials on Tuesday reported 391 active fires in British Columbia, along the west coast, 125 active fires in Alberta to the east and 107 active fires in Quebec, which borders New England.Įarlier this summer, winds rotating around a stationary, low-pressure system hovering over the eastern provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, known as the Canadian Maritimes, were directing smoke from the wildfires toward the northeastern U.S., Matt Sitkowski, the science editor in chief at The Weather Channel, told CBS News in June. The blazes were especially severe at the time in the country's eastern provinces, with wildfires raging in Quebec and Nova Scotia that forced roughly 14,000 people to evacuate, CBC News reported. In early June, officials said wildfires had scorched 6.7 million acres of land since the beginning of the year. turned attention to the fires on a large scale. The total area burned in 2023 is roughly the size of Indiana, and it has grown tremendously since just last month, when smoke plumes traveling south into the U.S. Wildfires are burning from coast to coast, and more than 900 were active at once on Tuesday. It was not the first time in recent months that both the sun and the moon have turned red in skies over various parts of the Northeast and the Pacific Northwest, as wildfires burning in eastern and western Canada continue to send smoke down the border.Ĭanada is experiencing one of its worst wildfire seasons on record, with close to 11 million hectares, or about 27 million acres, of land already burned since the beginning of the year, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre. Depending on the time, early risers reported witnessing either the moon or the sun bearing a reddish glow. People in New York City and across the northeastern United States woke up Tuesday morning to an unusual sight. Canadian wildfires causing air quality concerns in Northeastern U.S.