AccuWeather's Brett Anderson reports air quality is improving for the Plains and Midwest due to the Canadian wildfires weakening. Recent rainfall has soaked Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.
00:00We're going to talk about what has been going on with the recent fire activity, or sometimes lack thereof now, across Canada.
00:07Let's start with back in June.
00:09Yeah, back in June we had fires galore across northern Saskatchewan, Manitoba, parts of Alberta, northwest territories.
00:18Hundreds of fires, many of those very large fires which were not even being treated because they were in areas that were very hard to get to.
00:26So it was just producing an endless amount of smoke across much of western Canada.
00:31And with the steering winds coming in from the northwest to southeast, a lot of that smoke was coming down into the upper Midwest, especially parts of the Great Lakes.
00:38And then from time to time, even down into the northeast.
00:42And now look at the map.
00:44I mean, I can go back and forth a couple times.
00:46So this was early into June.
00:48And when you fast forward here into this next graphic, what do you see?
00:51Yeah, I see a lot less fire, which is great news.
00:54And the reason being, we've had a lot of rain over the past 30 days, especially across Saskatchewan and Manitoba.
01:02Several rainstorms have really put a tamper, tampered down some of the fires up across that region.
01:08So fire activity is greatly diminished, which is great news across that region.
01:13And at this point in time, the average trends for fire across this area is downward.
01:20We've already moved past the peak of normal fire activity across central and northern Canada for the year.
01:27So that's good news.
01:28So we just have to watch if we see any more drought developing and any more fires coming up in September.
01:34That's something we'll have to continue to monitor.
01:36But right now, it looks like the dry areas right now are focused more across the upper Great Lakes.
01:42So we talked about the recent rain that has helped reduce some of that.
01:46How about the wind flow?
01:47How has that changed?
01:48Yeah, yeah.
01:48We've had a big area of high pressure.
01:50July was very hot across the Great Lakes and northeast.
01:53And we're starting to cool down now, of course.
01:55But that high pressure ridge has been dominant for the past 20 to 30 days or so.
02:00And with the placement of that high across the Midwest, the Ohio Valley, the clockwise circulation around that high has kept most of that smoke up across central and northern Canada and away from the Great Lakes and northeast.
02:16And that's been something to enjoy, of course, with the lower humidity and not having to deal with the smoke and the fire concerns as much.
02:23But, of course, going forward, you touched on this a bit.
02:26And, of course, our long-range team, when they put out the fall forecast, we touched on the fire risk.
02:29Yeah, the fire risk as we go forward through the early part of the fall, we do highlight an area around the Great Lakes because we do think there's going to be continued drying out across the area.
02:40So that's one area we have to watch for.
02:42Also, southern Quebec, we are monitoring that area.
02:45No fire activity now, but it has been very dry over the past 30 days.
02:49But I'll tell you what, I think most of our focus, instead of Canada, it's going to be across the United States here over the next 30, 40, 50 days or so because we have a lot of fire activity across the western U.S.
03:02And if we're going to get some smoke into the central and eastern part of the country, I think the bulk of that is going to be coming in from the western U.S. instead of Canada.
03:10And that's a perfect line to end on that we're not done with it.
03:13It's just going to be a different location that it may be coming from.
03:16All right, AccuWeather Canadian expert Brett Anderson, thank you so much for joining us.
