New York: Smoke wildfires raging in Canada have affected parts of the U.S., as reports suggest that more than a third of the US population is under air quality alerts.
Meanwhile, satellite images from NASA show the smoke has even traveled across the Atlantic to Europe, according to CBC News.
For several days, parts of the Midwest have been seeing unhealthy levels of smoke, with Detroit, Chicago, and Milwaukee experiencing some of the worst air quality in the world, according to IQAir, which monitors the air quality index around the world. On Friday, the air quality in the Northeast was also impacted.
Alerts cover all or parts of more than a dozen states, from Minnesota to New York and south to the Carolinas. The worst air quality is still centered over the Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit and Indianapolis metro areas.
This comes as Canada officially marked its worst fire season on record. More than 200 of the wildfires are burning “out of control,” according to Canadian officials, CNN reported.
More than third of the US population is under air quality alerts, covering more than a dozen states from the Midwest to the East Coast, as smoke from Canadian wildfires sweeps across parts of the United States, prompting officials to call on the public to take safety precautions just weeks after similar wildfire smoke blanketed the Northeast.
Over 120 million people are under the alerts and some of the worst air quality, which is classified as “very unhealthy,” is centered over the Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit and Indianapolis metro areas. Some improvement in the air quality is expected on Thursday, particularly over the Great Lakes area, where rain and storms will help cleanse the air.
Canada is seeing its worst fire season on record as hundreds of blazes rage across the country – with more than 250 burning “out of control,” according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre. Several Canadian cities also recorded unhealthy air quality index readings Wednesday, according to IQAir.
