SYRACUSE, NY (WSYR-TV) — The blur you saw in the sky over central New York on Monday, May 8 was a mixture of high clouds but also some smoke resulting from wildfires in western Canada.
The smoke gave us the beautiful looking sunset on Monday as shown by our towercam in downtown Syracuse.
Over 100 individual wildfires have burned nearly a million acres in western Canada, primarily in the province of Northwest Alberta. 30,000 people have already evacuated the area to avoid the fires.
Conditions for the fires were created by an unusually warm and dry pattern that occurred last week. While central New York struggled with rain and temperatures in the 1950s, it was sunny and dry with temperatures exceeding 80 degrees in parts of Alberta. This heat broke some record temperatures.
Once the smoke rose high enough into the atmosphere, jet stream winds carried the smoke Monday through northwest Canada, then south across Hudson Bay, and finally to the northeast.
The smoke drifts more than 20,000 feet and will not cause any health problems for anyone with respiratory illnesses in central New York.
Additional wildfire smoke could temporarily filter our sun on Tuesday.
“Travel aficionado. Twitter scholar. Writer. Extreme coffee guru. Evil pop culture fanatic.”