Air quality in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic will begin to improve Thursday, according to a New York Times analysis of forecast models, as the dense mass of smoke that gripped those areas the previous day becomes a more widespread haze that will blanket the more of the East Coast as far south as Florida.
Smoke from the Canadian wildfire that covered the New York area on Wednesday gradually moved south toward Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., but conditions were expected to improve during Thursday.
There was, however, the possibility that places like New York could see conditions worsen if smoke that had drifted from the coast was pushed inland by a sea breeze. Regardless, the smoke should not be at the level seen Wednesday, forecasters said.
Heading into Thursday afternoon, a smaller, dense plume of smoke could move into Ontario before settling into western Pennsylvania and moving west into Ohio Friday night.
Noxious wildfire smoke that has engulfed New York and other parts of the Northeast this week after clearing from Canada is forecast to spread further south on Thursday, enveloping millions more Americans in unusually dangerous pollution.
As about 150 fires burned only in Quebec on Thursday, pollution in the United States was expected to extend far beyond New York – to Boston, Philadelphia, Washington and other cities.
By Friday, the worst pollution is expected to move west, away from the northeast, as a stationary system of lower pressure that has been sending smoke south this week changes direction, the National Weather Service said. But as long as the fires continue in Canada, this he said“smoke may just be drifting to other parts of the US”
However, the further into the future you go, the less confident meteorologists are in predicting the effects and density of smoke.
This is partly because high-resolution computer models are refreshed once an hour and distributed just under a day in advance. Also, the models cannot predict how much smoke the fires will produce in the coming days.
This weekend, a storm system that has been lingering in the northeast all week and driving smoke south should begin to move away, clearing the air in the area.