From East to West: Up In Smoke

Grand Teton National Park with a hazy sunset, filtered with smoke.

I woke up yesterday to the glow only a sunset would stream through my windows. I didn’t think anything of it other than that’s different, but pretty nonetheless. I went through my day telling people at my job how the eerie orange glow made the earth look filtered. It wasn’t until I was in the car with my mother when I realized the reason why the clouds were particularly smokey and the sun was the color of embers. I recall seeing headlines of the wildfires in Canada and the air quality alert I received from the weather app. How could I miss the signs that were right in front of me?

I instantly thought of the summer of 2018 on our family trip to Montana. We were all so excited to visit my grandparents in Kalispell. It was an adventure-packed trip with plans to visit three national parks: Grand Teton, Yellowstone, and Glacier. I was especially excited to go back to Glacier, since it was rainy the first time I went in 2016.

When we got off the plane in Salt Lake City, the dryness hit instantly. Humid New Hampshire summers made me forget about how harsh the dry heat could be.

As my family and I drove north, the hazier the earth became. We started our park excursion in Idaho and made our way to Montana, stopping in different tourist shops and hiking various trails. It wasn’t until we reached my grandparent’s house when the sky became bleak and the air became thick with smoke. We watched the smokey sky linger for the rest of the trip.

Wildfire smoke is nothing new to the west coast. From the wildfires in 2018 at Glacier National Park to the Santa Clarita fires in 2020, the west was no stranger to smoke in the air. With that said, when was the last time the east coast experienced smoked-out skylines? According to the New York Times, the air quality in New York City had reached a record index of 400 due to the wildfires in eastern Canada. The major news outlet also generated a map of the smoke that spread well into Florida. For the east coast, the smell of smoke is uncommon and nightmarish.

New York City skyline in a thick orange haze on Tuesday evening via EarthCam

NBC reported 414 fires burning around Quebec and Nova Scotia Tuesday evening. 239 of the fires were considered “out of control” by the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre with “more than 6.7 million acres already burned this year.”

The wildfire news also spread around social media, especially on Twitter and Tik Tok. Some creators made jokes about the haze ‘making the best lighting’ for selfies. Others walked around NYC with a mask, showing viewers what is going on around the city with the hazardous air quality.

According to a National Weather Service forecast, the haze is expected to make a slowed exit over the next couple of days. The thick layer of smoke is expected to be pushed further west. Although the smoke is migrating, the fires are still active in Canada. PBS reported firefighters from South Africa, New Zealand, the U.S., and other countries have been recruited in order to contain the wildfires.

Wildfires are not new to us in the U.S. by any means, but the frequency is a cause for major concern. The ongoing wildfires is not a piece of passive news, it is a warning of what could become of our earth with the climate rapidly changing before our eyes. It is easy to be oblivious to the sign of something wrong, but this situation is a reminder to pay attention to your environment. It is a reminder to be curious of your surroundings and care about them.