Wildfire smoke from Canada covers Eastern US

AccuWeather Canada Expert Brett Anderson discusses the U.S. impact from the Canadian wildfires and how long we can expect it to be an issue.

Transcript

00:00I want to bring in our Canadian expert and our fire expert Brett Anderson and now Brett of course

00:06for the second time in the last three years we're talking about fires in Canada that are having

00:14huge impacts across the United States. For our viewers just tuning in on this let's just give

00:20them a little a little like almost white paper on what's going on with the Canadian fires and

00:27how unusual it is across parts of the provinces to have them this early. Yeah it's off to a very

00:33rapid start unfortunately in Saskatchewan and also Manitoba as you go farther west British Columbia

00:40Alberta fairly normal so far this spring but again many fires are broken out across Saskatchewan

00:45Alberta mostly caused by humans unfortunately and those fires continue to burn limited resources to

00:51put out those fires and this is a bad omen certainly for the summer burning. Yeah and just

00:57to give you an idea Brett I mean what we're looking at you were telling me in British Columbia

01:00and Alberta this time of the year not unusual we see it almost every year but it's the fires

01:06in the Canadian prairies well not necessarily the prairies it's the timberland in the central

01:13and northern part of the provinces. That's exactly right fires in Saskatchewan Manitoba again

01:19five to ten times more than the usual amount of area that has been burned so you can see the stats

01:26here about 1900 square miles both in Saskatchewan Manitoba burned normally at this time of year

01:33you only see about two to three hundred square miles burned and then so far what we're seeing here is

01:38basically two states of Delaware burned in each province. And the problem is Brett and you were

01:44talking about this limited resources also very remote areas so it stands to reason similar to what we

01:52saw with these fires in Ontario two years ago that mother nature is going to end up having to put out

01:59the majority of these fires so we're going to be dealing with this smoke for quite some time. Yeah

02:03there's so many fires limited resources so obviously some fires we put out but some of the big ones in

02:09remote areas are likely going to continue unfortunately through the summer into the fall so what does that

02:14mean for the rest of us means a lot of smoke and haze to deal with from time to time through the summer.

02:19Well let's take a look at Friday Brett you could see for the most part the concentration of smoke

02:25anywhere across mostly across central Canada but there's going to be some impacts even into the

02:31northeast. Yeah we we still have some residual haze now in the northeast but that's starting to thin out

02:37now and I think you know not too many problems here through the rest of this week and then by the

02:42weekend unfortunately we're going to see a change in the winds once again so some of that smoke's going to

02:47get pushed down into the northern plains upper midwest once again by Sunday into Monday and as we

02:52progress further on the winds turn into the west northwest into the northeast and so we may see a

02:58return to some of that smoke and haze even into the major cities of the northeast by Tuesday Wednesday

03:03next week or so. What I find interesting is the weather pattern mid to late next week across North

03:08America our long-range team and you are projecting that that's kind of the pattern we're going to see at

03:14times through the summer. Yeah exactly again we're expecting a big ridge of high pressure to be

03:19building across the western states the second half of the summer so what does that mean that

03:24means more of a west to northwesterly flow of air directing that smoke right into the upper midwest

03:30and parts of the northeast probably from time to time through the entire summer into perhaps the

03:35early fall. Alright our Canadian expert and fire expert Brett Anderson not good news for the northeast

03:41doesn't look as bad in the northeast as what we saw two years ago because the fires are a little

03:47farther away but Brett thanks for breaking it down.