{"id":809529,"date":"2026-07-18T06:32:17","date_gmt":"2026-07-18T06:32:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/809529\/"},"modified":"2026-07-18T06:32:17","modified_gmt":"2026-07-18T06:32:17","slug":"more-canadian-wildfire-smoke-shrouds-us-midwest-mid-atlantic-and-north-east-us-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/809529\/","title":{"rendered":"More Canadian wildfire smoke shrouds US midwest, mid-Atlantic and north-east | US news"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tens of millions of Americans are enduring another day of smoky skies<\/a>, irritated eyes and bad air quality, as Canadian wildfire<\/a> smoke spread again over huge swathes of the US, affecting about 109 million people across the midwest, mid-Atlantic and north-east.<\/p>\n

The pungent smoke blanketed cities such as Chicago and Detroit, where residents on Friday were warned to stay indoors and reduce activity levels after the air-quality index reached a \u201chazardous\u201d 361, according to the government website AirNow<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As smoke plumes swirled around the eastern US, mostly from about 200 out-of-control wildfires in Canada<\/a>, Donald Trump threatened to impose additional tariffs on its northern neighbor, with the US president accusing the Canadian government of \u201cwillful negligence\u201d in its management of forestry.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are holding Canada responsible for the fact that they are not properly maintaining their Forests, and Brush therein, and the United States is being unnecessarily invaded by filthy, polluted, and unhealthy air, the quality of which is dangerous, and totally unacceptable!\u201d Trump wrote in a Truth Social post<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The smoke drifted into Baltimore and Washington DC overnight, creating very unhealthy air quality with index values of 281 and 247, respectively, as of 6am eastern time. In New York City, where smoke has blanketed the city<\/a> since Tuesday, air quality stood at an \u201cunhealthy\u201d 184 early Friday. It later improved to 124, a reading considered \u201cUnhealthy for Sensitive Groups\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"CopernicusCopernicus satellite model shows estimated carbon emissions of Canadian wildfires<\/p>\n

Philadelphia and Cleveland had readings considered \u201cvery unhealthy\u201d at about 260. Other parts of Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin also recorded readings in the \u201chazardous\u201d range.<\/p>\n

Overall, the global air-quality index showed pollution in five major North American cities at higher levels than Kinshasa or Nairobi in Africa, the next cities on the list. Nasa\u2019s Fire Information for Resource Management System<\/a>, or Firms, shows pockets of Canadian wildfires reaching deep into the Northwest Territories.<\/p>\n

In Michigan, the state\u2019s department of environment, Great Lakes and energy recommended closing windows, minimizing the opening of doors and using HVAC systems rated Merv-13 or higher.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you must be outdoors for short periods of time, an N95 or P100 respirator marked with NIOSH is recommended,\u201d that alert said.<\/p>\n

But some cities in the north-east and New England are expected to get relief from smoky skies on Friday as stronger winds from Quebec \u2013 not from the wildfire zone in north-western Ontario \u2013 blow the smoke out.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere has been a clear intensification in wildfire activity for Canada over the past few weeks. Smoke from major fires \u2013 particularly in Ontario \u2013 [is] already having severe air-quality impacts across cities in the Great Lakes region and the north-eastern United States,\u201d said Mark Parrington, a senior scientist at the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur forecasts show the smoke continuing to move eastwards across the north Atlantic, and potentially towards Europe, highlighting the scale of wildfire pollution and how it can travel thousands of kilometers across borders and impact air quality in places far beyond the fires themselves,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Organizers of the World Cup final in East Rutherford, New Jersey<\/a>, will be watching the smoke patterns carefully: smoke currently over the mid-Atlantic is expected to blow back up into the north-east.<\/p>\n

But an approaching storm system from the west, bringing severe thunderstorms, could interact with the smoke, creating worse conditions as rain drags smoky air from higher up in the atmosphere down to the ground.<\/p>\n

When that storm passes late on Saturday, air quality is likely to improve in time for a 3pm Sunday kick-off. But authorities have said they are \u201cmonitoring\u201d whether smoke plumes will affect the game, sources familiar with the situation told ABC News<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Parrington told the AP that \u201cit looks like there is another smoky air mass following in behind that system, but it\u2019s not clear right now how much or how it might reach New York<\/a> or New Jersey, when it comes to actually Sunday\u201d.<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cIf the fire intensity really picks up again through [Saturday], it\u2019s possible it puts more smoke into the atmosphere that then might quickly follow that rain event.\u201d<\/p>\n

Canada\u2019s largest fire, near Ontario\u2019s remote Wabakimi provincial park, is reported to be spread across 787,802 acres (318,812 hectares) by the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Center. It is among 194 out-of-control and large fires that were burning as of Thursday.<\/p>\n

Parrington said smoke plumes from the large-scale wildfires in Canada\u2019s Northwest Territories had reached the Arctic Ocean as well as other parts of the country.<\/p>\n

Nearly 6m acres are estimated to have burned, less than a quarter of land consumed by blazes when Canadian wildfire smoke last blanketed the US<\/a> in<\/a> 2023<\/a>. Fires<\/a> in northern Minnesota have burned more than 63,000 acres.<\/p>\n

In the west, wildfires in Oregon, Washington and Idaho have also been reported.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe wildfire situation across North America just got worse. Tens of thousands of lightning strikes across the Pacific Northwest [have] ignited dozens of new wildfires across Oregon and Washington,\u201d wrote<\/a> forecaster Colin McCarthy on Thursday evening.<\/p>\n

Smoke plumes from wildfires risk reversing gains made from reductions in pollution from other sources, according to a 2025 study<\/a> by Carnegie Mellon University\u2019s Tepper School of Business. Researchers estimated that smoke from wildfires and prescribed burns caused $200bn in health damages in 2017, and were associated with 20,000 premature deaths.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany studies have found that fire smoke, like other air pollutants, is associated with increased morbidity and mortality risk,\u201d said co-author Nicholas Muller, professor of economics, engineering and public policy.<\/p>\n

At the other end of the US, heavy rainfall<\/a> across south and central Texas, including Texas Hill Country, an area hit by catastrophic flash flooding last year<\/a>, has exceeded 20in (50cm) in some places since Monday. The Guadalupe River near Comfort in Kerr county crested at 37ft above flood stage.<\/p>\n

AccuWeather\u2019s Global Weather Center put a preliminary estimate of damage and economic loss at $11bn to $13bn. The extreme rainfall is consistent with findings from the company\u2019s climate research<\/a> unit that has found rainfall in amounts greater than 4in in a 24-hour period has actually increased by 70% since 1995.<\/p>\n

Jonathan Porter, AccuWeather\u2019s chief meteorologist, said in an email that the common description of an extreme rainfall event as a \u201c1-in-1,000-year rain event\u201d is that it relies on probabilities.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn a warming climate, those historical probabilities are changing, meaning these extreme rainfall events can occur more frequently than the statistics from the past would suggest,\u201d Porter said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tens of millions of Americans are enduring another day of smoky skies, irritated eyes and bad air quality,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":809530,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[49,48,295,66],"class_list":["post-809529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-environment","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/809529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=809529"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/809529\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/809530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=809529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=809529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=809529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}