The past few weeks have been hot and hazy with air quality warnings asking people to limit travel. I’ve mostly stayed inside (though I finally mowed the lawn today) and set up my dad’s old air purifier to keep the air nice in the house.
In the middle of all of this, I thought my cat might have asthma. Asthma in cats isn’t rare, but it is tricky (and expensive) to treat. Thankfully, Wilhelmina does not have asthma; she has a sinus infection. The vet recommended getting a humidifier. I asked if that was really a given the time of year and where we live. The vet then suggested I keep Wilhelmina in the bathroom while I showered.
She does not enjoy this treatment.
The haze started getting bad around the 4th of July. Fireworks were going off all week prior to the Independence Day celebrations which put tons of smoke into the air. There ended up being rolling thunderstorms on the 4th, which got some of the smoke out of the air.
It still wasn’t easy to breathe. I nearly missed having an inhaler of my own.
This past weekend, Canadian wildfires has sent smoke into my area. It’s a bit mind boggling to think how far the smoke has to travel. The worst of the fires are in Ontario (between 600 to 1,000 miles away from my current location). I am no where near Ontario, yet a thick blanket of grey-white haze has settled over my area.
It was eerie traveling on some of the backroads through Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania on Friday. If I hadn’t known it was midday in July, I’d have thought it was a morning in November. I could barely see the mountains as I drove up route 15. They were dark grey blobs rising up to meet a lighter grey sky.
It could have been the start of a horror novel or old fairy tale.
Things began to clear up yesterday with the rain (and the threat of tornadoes close to where I was staying). I finally saw some blue sky, too.
However, some of my family was in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and the entire time it was just smoky haze. My aunts said it got so bad at times that they couldn’t see across Lake Independence (it’s a small lake near Big Bay, MI). Granted they were much closer to the fires, but nowhere near where they were actually burning - they’d have had to cross Lake Superior for that.
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| My sibling sent me this picture from Big Bay, MI. |
This isn’t the first time smoke from Canadian wildfires have drifted over the northeast. A few years ago, I remember waking up to an orange sky. It looked like dawn had just broken over the horizon, except it was several hours after the sun had risen. Pictures from New York City had looked apocalyptic.
More and more wildfires are likely to breakout in the coming years. In winter of 2025, Los Angeles had huge fires break out all over the surrounding areas directly killing at least 31 people and indirectly causing the deaths of over 400 (at least according to Wikipedia). Australia has also seen increasingly intense fire seasons that make international news every year.
Natural wildfires are going to happen. In fact some wildfires are healthy for certain environments. They clear out old dead brush and encourage new growth.
However, wildfires have been getting more problematic due in part to climate change and human actions. Hotter summers with less rainfall leads to drier areas perfect for fires to spread quickly. And though wildfires can be caused by lightening strikes, the vast majority are caused by people.
Some of these fires are accidental. Someone might now out a camp fire properly or set off fireworks when they shouldn’t or have a gender reveal party that includes more pyrotechnics than necessary. Others are intentionally set.
I’ve seen a fire be started by someone. One 4th of July, probably over two decades ago, I was setting off sparklers for my neighbors (my parents usually had a party on the 4th at our house) and being extra careful as was my responsibility - though it was probably questionable that I had even been the one to set them off. We wrapped up not long after sunset and headed inside. About a half hour later, one of my neighbors came running up to our house (we lived at the top of a hill) asking if we had a fire extinguisher. While my mom went to go get ours, my dad and I went outside to see the fire. The trees in my neighborhood’s were set ablaze higher than the house.
My mom comes out with the fire extinguisher and someone (I will probably never remember who) said something along the lines of “that's not going to be much help.”
At least the fire department had already been called before the neighbor came up to our house. Bottle rockets were the cause of the fire. We’d seen a few going off nearby and one likely landed in the trees in my neighbor’s backyard. My dad had never allowed us to have bottle rockets or anything that shot up into the air for that matter because of the woods that surrounded our houses. If the wind had been a little worse or the trees a little drier, the whole neighborhood could have gone up.
Thankfully, the fire was quickly put out.
I’ve only ever seen the aftermath of one natural fire in New Jersey. My favorite hiking area had been struck by lightening and it was quickly contained. They closed the trains closest to the damaged area for a month or two (I don’t fully remember). When the trains reopened, I remember how much the whole area still smelled like camp fire and how much the trees had been charred. The fire had turned dead trees and plants to ash, but the ones that survived only had a few scorch marks.
Both of these fires could have easily become huge problems under different circumstances, but firefighters were quick to prevent their spread. I was taught from an early age to be respectful of the wilderness and to pay attention to the risk of fires. Smoky the Bear taught me that only I could prevent forest fires.
So to end this post, remember to check the fire risk levels before lighting any fires outdoors. Please don’t set off fireworks without training or a license. And for the love of your future children, keep gender reveal parties to smaller announcements - a colorful cake is just fine…or a piñata.
Wildfires are likely to continue to disrupt our lives. You can be prepared and have an evacuation plan, you can stay inside to avoid the smoke, and you can just not light a fire when the area is too dry. Heck, you can even become a firefighter - a couple of the kids I used to babysit are now firefighters (with kids…good gracious time has flown by).
Stay safe out there.
Until next week.
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