Canadian wildfire smoke returns to Philadelphia skies

That dipped-in-milk look returned to skies over Philly on Wednesday as wildfire smoke from Canada drifted across Philadelphia and other areas of the Northeast.

Fortunately, unlike in June 2023, the smoke has remained in the mid- to upper levels of the atmosphere and hasn’t mixed down to the layers in which we live and breathe, said Cameron Wunderlin, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Mount Holly.

“A lot of it has cleared,” Wunderlin said Wednesday afternoon, and while it’s possible that more of it would appear on Thursday, it almost certainly will all be gone by the end of the workweek with a shift of the winds.

Dave Dombek, senior meteorologist with AccuWeather Inc., said that a source of the smoke has been about 2,500 miles away in the woodlands of Alberta, where about 140,000 acres were burning as of last week, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Center.

Circulating wind patterns have drawn the smoke toward northeastern Canada and then south toward the Northeastern United States.

Dombek said the Philadelphia region may continue to see some scattered smoke on Thursday, but denser concentrations are likely to be confined to New England and northern New York State.

The weather service’s Wunderlin said that by Friday, the winds will be blowing from a more southerly direction, and some of the deeper blues should return to the skies.

Overall, about 2.9 million acres have burned in Canada this year, slightly below the 10-year normal, the forest center reported.

In early June 2023, walking outside around here was akin to inhaling a pack of Canadian woodlands.

The wildfires raged in Quebec, almost due north of Philly, and winds from the north delivered the smoke directly to the region throughout the atmosphere.

The smell was so potent that Montgomery County reported that it received a storm of 911 calls reporting “a burning odor.”

On one morning, Philly experienced its worst day for air quality since fine-particle pollution records began in 1999.

This smoky episode evidently won’t be nearly as eventful. “It’s a much different situation,” said Dombek.

On Friday, winds are due to blow from a southerly direction, and that also will foreshadow changes from what has been a splendid run of August weather around here.

Showers are possible Saturday during the day and are more likely at night, with more showers possible Sunday and Monday.

However, with daytime highs in the 80s, no serious heat is on the horizon, nor any more smoke for the next several days.

Inquirer staff writer Frank Kummer contributed to this article.