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Canadian wildfire smoke impacting crops, air quality across Upper Midwest, Great Lakes
A state climatologist says this week’s heat dome and a strengthening low-pressure system have pushed dense wildfire smoke from Canada across the Great Lakes into the Northeast.
Michigan’s Jeff Andresen says, “That has basically taken charge.”
“It’s strengthened over the last several days, and it’s forced the upper airflow across the Great Lakes region to be more out of the northwest, which of course is one of the reasons we have the problems with the smoke,” he explains.
Field crops entomologist Chris DiFonzo says the intensity of the wildfires is being driven in part by an expansion of some insects.
“Some of that is actually driven by expansion of certain bark beetle species that have killed a lot of trees over the last maybe 10 or 20 years,” she says. “There’s a lot of fuel there, and then the fires that are happening probably are more thorough. They’re probably bigger.”
Andresen says the fires in western Ontario are closer than in recent years, increasing the concentration of smoke, which can impact some crop development and harvests.
“When we have these really unusually smoky, hazy skies, we reduce the amount of solar energy getting down to the surface,” he says. “That changes a number of things, but a big one is the temperature of the forage, whatever it is that you’ve cut and is lying on the ground here, it’s going to be less.”
He says a cooling off and better chances for rain are expected next week, but persistent drought and warmer-than-normal conditions could cause the fires to continue throughout the summer.
Air quality alerts are in effect across at least 17 states from Minnesota to Virginia.
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