Every Time Canadian Smoke Has Reached New York

It feels like something new, but Canadian wildfire smoke drifting into New York State is not a new phenomenon.

It's actually been happening for decades. What has changed is how often it's happening.

Every Time Canadian Smoke Has Reached New York

Canada averages roughly 7,000 wildfires every single year. That number has been fairly consistent for the last three decades.

The infamous 2023 fire season, the one that turned New York City's skyline orange and sent millions of people scrambling for masks, didn't actually see an unusual number of fires. The number of fires was right around average.

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What made 2023 historically bad was how big the fires got. An unusually large number of them escaped early containment efforts, grew to enormous sizes, and burned a record total area. That's what produced the most severe smoke event the Northeast had seen in decades.

Why Is The Smoke Reaching New York More Often?

Welber Zone

According to Hudson Valley Weather, the smoke was always capable of reaching us. The difference now is that it's reaching us more often, and when it does, it's hitting ground level where we actually breathe it, instead of staying high up in the atmosphere where it just creates colorful sunsets.

Larger fires, combined with certain wind patterns pushing smoke down from the upper atmosphere to the surface, have made these episodes more frequent and more dangerous in recent years.

The weather decides where the smoke goes, not where the fires are. The exact same Canadian fires burning in the exact same location can produce zero impact on New York one year and dangerous air quality the next. It all comes down to which way the wind is blowing thousands of feet above our heads.

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