By Ricardo Lezama 
See our Spanish Version.
Massive wildfires that were once thought irrelevant to the eastern seaboard are back once again.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul announced that within the next 48 hours, the entire region will be blanketed with smoke just as it was in the beginning of the month. The air is actually more along the lines of second hand smoke which is blowing from Central US.
Even so, an air quality alert is being emitted across the state of New York.
Early June, New York City faced a heavy smoky scenario last time around. It was horrible as documented in this video:
In anticipation of limited visibility, 1000 flights in the region have been canceled as severe smoke complicated the ability for airplanes to land in an already difficult to navigate airspace.
The exact intensity of this latest round of smoke is unknown. However, Buffalo, Syracuse and the Western part of New York are deemed to receive at minimum ‘unhealthy’ air, according to statements from Governor Kathy Hochul. Additionally, while it starts on Thursday, there is no clear indication that the plumes will settle in any time amount. They could just well sit and accumulate as they did the last time the event surfaced.
One of the more chilling comments is as follows: ““If you want to know the effects of climate change, you’re going to feel it tomorrow in real time,” NY Governor Kathy Hochul said. “We are truly the first generation to feel the real effects of climate change, and we’re also the last generation to do anything meaningful about it.”
We do seem to be the first in line to feel the crushing effects of global warming.
Why Is Smoke Anticipated?
Despite the return to normalcy in New York, 257 Canadian wildfires are still active at the moment. These wildfires send smoke into the air and while traditional weather patterns blow from south to north in that region, a weather storm system is actually leaving New York, which permits for that smoke to blow north to south.
The broad area of Chicago is affected by the smoke already. They currently have the nation and worlds worst air quality due to these fires and abrupt weather changes. There is really no way around the issue for many of these cities. Once weather patterns change, the fire is essentially swashing around the region and never venting away from it.
Flight Cancellations
The latest string of flight cancellations are not quite related to the upcoming haze of smoke. However, the limits on visibility may compound the already existing issue regarding flights. One can conduct their own analysis on the platform flight aware, but CNN was able to pull data from Flight Aware and determined approximately 3000 flights were impacted in the US over these weather storms.
