Thousands of visitors were told to evacuate a remote Minnesota wilderness area accessible only by boat as wildfires send dangerously heavy smoke over the U.S. Midwest and Northeast this week.
More than 100 wildfires are burning in Canada and winds are carrying the smoke southeast. Warnings about unhealthy air conditions Wednesday extended from Minnesota through Toronto and into New York. Unusually hot summer temperatures were expected, too.
The best advice is to stay indoors to avoid both the smoke and the extreme heat, said Tyler Hasenstein, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Chanhassen, Minnesota.
“Those two things coinciding with each other is not good from a health perspective,” he said.
AQI hit 133 today, the entire day looked like a sunset. I was in Rhode Island.
Wait. Isn’t 133 just “poor”? I thought unhealthy started at 150 and severe starts at 200. I mean, it’s smokey, but it could be way worse.
Ours is 439 in Milwaukee. The weirdest part is that it smells like burning plastic. The ai says it’s because the smoke has traveled further and had more time to break down in the uv light. I don’t really buy it though, I think a lot of plastic is burning somewhere